Stress, Coping, and Social Support Processes: Where Are We? What Next?

1995/01/01 by Peggy A. Thoits · 27 citations
Health Professions · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Employment and Welfare Studies #Health disparities and outcomes #Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction

paper · doi:10.2307/2626957

Abstract

I review existing knowledge, unanswered questions, and new directions in research on stress, coping resource, coping strategies, and social support processes. New directions in research on stressors include examining the differing impacts of stress across a range of physical and mental health outcomes, the "carry-overs" of stress from one role domain or stage of life into another, the benefits derived from negative experiences, and the determinants of the meaning of stressors. Although a sense of personal control and perceived social support influence health and mental health both directly and as stress buffers, the theoretical mechanisms through which they do so still require elaboration and testing. New work suggests that coping flexibility and structural constraints on individuals' coping efforts may be important to pursue. Promising new directions in social support research include studies of the negative effects of social relationships and of support giving, mutual coping and support-giving dynamics, optimal "matches" between individuals' needs and support received, and properties of groups which can provide a sense of social support. Qualitative comparative analysis, optimal matching analysis, and event-structure analysis are new techniques which may help advance research in these broad topic areas. To enhance the effectiveness of coping and social support interventions, intervening mechanisms need to be better understood. Nevertheless, the policy implications of stress research are clear and are important given current interest in health care reform in the United States.

Citations

• Perceived Support, Received Support, and Adjustment to Stressful Life Events
• Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support
• The Twain Meet: Empirical Explanations of Sex Differences in Health and Mortality
• The social readjustment rating scale
• An Analysis of Coping in a Middle-Aged Community Sample
• Gender and Marital Status Differences in Control and Distress: Common Stress versus Unique Stress Explanations
• Gender, Multiple Roles, Role Meaning, and Mental Health

Cited by

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• Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health
• The Impact of Complex Family Structure on Child Well‐being: Evidence From Siblings
• Psychological Safety: A Meta‐Analytic Review and Extension
• Child and Adult Socioeconomic Status and the Cortisol Response to Acute Stress: Evidence From the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis
• Exploring how children and adolescents talk about coping strategies relating to loneliness using reflexive thematic analysis: a qualitative study
• “Non-traditional” siblings and the academic outcomes of adolescents
• The Impact of Culture on Loss Aversion
• Cynicism Explains the Link Between Subjective Social Class and Perceived Social Support Availability
• Social connection and cognitive health: A review of concepts, measures, and research priorities
• The Motivated Chatterbox: Examining the Motives of Goal Sharing
• Unemployment among single mothers and adolescent children's mental health
• Social Support and Social Reform: A Progressive Crime Control Agenda
• Deeply Rooted in Memories: Toward a Comprehensive Overview of 30 Years of Memorable Message Literature
• Minority Stress and Mental Health: A Review of the Literature
• Revisiting the Moderating Effect of Social Support on Strain: A Gendered Test
• Beyond the Ballot: The Associations Between Political Ideology, Division of Parental Work, Social Support, and the Relational and Parental Experiences of Mothers
• Social support in the urban safety net: Assessing tie activation among individuals with complex care needs
• Experiences of middle-class fathers of children with autism spectrum disorders in the context of hegemonic masculinity: The case of Turkey
• Culture Moderates the Relation Between Perceived Stress, Social Support, and Mental and Physical Health
• Social support and immunosuppressant therapy adherence among adult renal transplant recipients
• The Ties That Bind: The Association Between Social Network Ties, Integration, and Stress Among Incarcerated Women
• Gender differences in perceived stress and coping among college students
• Social support networks among diverse sexual minority populations.

Related

• Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health
• Functional roles of social support within the stress and coping process: A theoretical and empirical overview
• Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.
• Coping: Pitfalls and Promise
• The Sociological Study of Stress