Coping, stress, and social resources among adults with unipolar depression.

TLDR

The study aimed to develop coping response indices and examine the roles of stress, social resources, and coping in 424 adults entering depression treatment. Indices were constructed using a stress‑and‑coping paradigm and an expanded concept of multiple life‑stress domains. Chronic strains were more strongly linked to dysfunction severity, problem‑solving and affective‑regulation coping reduced dysfunction, emotional‑discharge coping increased dysfunction, and stressors, social resources, and coping additively predicted functioning without buffering effects.

Abstract

We used a stress and coping paradigm to guide the development of indices of coping responses and to explore the roles of stress, social resources, and coping among 424 men and women entering treatment for depression. We also used an expanded concept of multiple domains of life stress to develop several indices of ongoing life strains. Although most prior studies have focused on acute life events, we found that chronic strains were somewhat more strongly and consistently related to the severity of dysfunction. The coping indices generally showed acceptable conceptual and psychometric characteristics and only moderate relationships to respondents' sociodemographic characteristics or to the severity of the stressful event for which coping was sampled. Coping responses directed toward problem solving and affective regulation were associated with less severe dysfunction, whereas emotional-discharge responses, more frequently used by women, were linked to greater dysfunction. Stressors, social resources, and coping were additively predictive of patient's functioning, but coping and social resources did not have stress-attenuation or buffering effects.