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

TLDR

Research on stress and coping is expanding to examine how stress affects diverse health outcomes, the transfer of stress across life domains, the benefits of negative experiences, and the role of personal control and social support as buffers, while also exploring negative effects of relationships and optimal support matching. The review aims to synthesize current knowledge, identify unanswered questions, and chart future directions for improving coping and social support interventions by clarifying intervening mechanisms. The authors propose using qualitative comparative analysis, optimal matching analysis, and event‑structure analysis to advance research on stress, coping, and social support. Recent studies indicate that coping flexibility and structural constraints on coping efforts are promising areas for future research.

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.