Coping and adjustment during childhood and adolescence

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Background:

• Child and adolescent coping strategies are crucial for navigating common stressors.
• Existing frameworks for classifying coping strategies need refinement.
• Understanding the link between coping and adjustment is vital for nonclinical populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent research (last 10 years) on child and adolescent coping strategies.
• To analyze and compare current conceptual and classification schemes for coping.
• To explore the relationship between coping strategies and adjustment in children and adolescents.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review of research published within the last decade.
• Analysis and comparison of existing coping strategy classification systems.
• Categorization of reviewed studies into descriptive/taxonomic, age-group comparisons, and coping-adjustment evaluations.

Main Results:

• Developmental commonalities and changes in coping strategies were identified.
• Problem-focused/emotion-focused and approach/avoidance frameworks are useful for description.
• Current classification systems do not adequately differentiate between adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies.

Conclusions:

• Existing models provide a descriptive basis for child and adolescent coping.
• There is a critical need to refine classification systems to distinguish between beneficial and detrimental coping mechanisms.
• Future research should explore alternative models, such as coping competence, to better understand adjustment outcomes.