Urban adolescent stress and hopelessness

Abstract

This study sought to explore potential mechanisms through which uncontrollable, chronic stressors may lead to hopelessness in low‐income, urban adolescents. In particular, the roles of specific coping strategies as moderators and/or mediators of the association between stressors and hopelessness were examined. Results suggest that chronic, uncontrollable stressors were significantly and positively related to hopelessness in this sample. Active coping, distraction coping, and social‐support‐seeking coping emerged as moderators for males, such that uncontrollable stressors were more highly associated with hopelessness for those boys who reported using more active, distraction, and social‐support‐seeking coping strategies. An analogous moderating effect was found for ruminative coping for girls. Ruminative coping also emerged as a mediator of the relation between uncontrollable stressors and hopelessness for girls.

The Costs and Benefits of Active Coping for Adolescents Residing in Urban Poverty

“…Empirical findings on gender differences in the use of active coping have been mixed, with some studies suggesting males are more likely to use this approach (e.g., Landis et al 2007;Kraag et al 2006), others suggesting that females are more likely to use it (Chandra and Batada 2006;D'Imperio et al 2000), and still others reporting no gender differences (Gaylord-Harden et al 2008). Studies of exposure to violence in the context of urban poverty have found that males report more exposure (Buka et al 2001;Carlson and Grant 2008;Foster et al 2004).…”

“…Active coping has generally been found to predict fewer symptoms (Aldridge and Roesch 2008;Coyle and Vera 2013;Woodman and Hauser-Cram 2013), but some prior studies have reported that active coping strategies are less effective for coping with uncontrollable stressors (Compas et al 2001;Gonzales et al 2001;Landis et al 2007). In our sample, increasing levels of violence exposure likely indicate decreasing levels of controllability.…”

How social and cultural contexts shape the development of coping: Youth in the inner city as an example

“…For example, Rosario, Salzinger, Feldman, and Ng-Mak (2003) found that active coping in response to exposure to violence predicted increased aggression. Similarly, Landis et al (2007) found that distraction to cope with violence, while often otherwise effective, predicted depression. Two studies have suggested that mild substance use as a coping response is not associated with greater risk in urban populations, even though it has detrimental effects for other populations (Brunswick, Lewis, & Messeril, 1992;Tolan et al, 2002).…”

Felicidad y esperanza subjetiva

“…Besides, the hope plays a role as predictive factor of happiness on the Turkish university students. As we mentioned before, previous research findings emphasized that high scores of hope is not only positively related to psychological health (Allott, Loganathan, & Fulford, 2002), psychological strength (Valle, Huebner, & Suldo, 2006), psychological well-being and self compassion (Raque-Bogdan, 2010), self-esteem (Ciarrochi, Heaven, & Davies, 2007), life satisfaction and optimism (Bailey, Eng, Frisch, & Snyder, 2007), but also negatively related to burnout (Pompili et al, 2010), anxiety (Cunningham, Gunn, Alladin, & Cawthorpe, 2008), worry (Shinn et al, 2009), depression (Arnau et al, 2007), stress (Landis et al, 2007), rumination (Michael & Snyder, 2005) and our study results are supported by all these findings. The current study conducted with the Turkish culture also supporting the previous studies.…”