Familiarizes counselors with role of death fear as primary source of anxiety for all individuals. Attempts to define death anxiety and demonstrate how defense mechanisms used to deny it can affect development in young adulthood. Provides three examples of maladaptive modes of behavior resulting from ineffective defense mechanisms (addiction,…

Using middle school students (N=1,454), examines the factor structure of the Coping Resources Inventory Scale for Educational Enhancement (CRISEE), an instrument designed to measure coping resources in youth. Results provide evidence that the CRISEE may be a reliable measure of dimensionally distinct types of coping resources. (Author/MKA)

Naturalistic inquiry and content analysis were used to examine the lives of successful adult learners. When confronted with failure, these learners engaged in problem solving, visioning, objectifying, emotional, reflecting, partnering, and active learning behaviors that motivated them toward further achievement. (SK)

Examines coping and emotional distress in children (N=50) assisting an elderly mother hospitalized for depression. The hypothesis that maternal object-relations would be related to more adaptive coping and less emotional distress received partial support, whereas the idea that mothers' history of depression would be associated with the child's…

Explores some key existential or ontological concepts to show their applicability to the complex area of disaster impact as it relates to health and social welfare practice. Draws on existentialist philosophy, particularly that of John Paul Sartre, and introduces some key ontological concepts to show how they specifically apply to the experience…

Synthesizes past studies of illness, stress, coping, and social support and offers a model of communicative support, based on problematic integration theory, that emphasizes two major dimensions of meaning in the breast cancer experience. Suggests that supportive messages are designed to help the breast cancer patient manage both perceptions of…

The concept of grief may have value as a way to understand individual reactions to change. Coping strategies for dealing with change should include grief management processes such as attending to endings, managing the transition between old and new practices, and launching a new beginning. (SK)

Tests Coleman's (1995) hypotheses that the strategies adolescents use to cope with cultural diversity will be organized in a sequential manner and that adolescents will use different strategies depending on the situation. To test these hypotheses, 398 adolescents rated the likelihood of using 6 strategies for coping with cultural diversity. Makes…

This study examined associations between adolescents' self-reports and parents' reports of adolescents' exposure to family stress, coping, and symptoms of anxiety/depression and aggression in a sample of 78 adolescent offspring of depressed parents. Significant cross-informant correlations were found between adolescents' reports of family stress,…

The present study tested for gender differences in depressive symptoms in a sample of 622 low-income, urban, African American adolescents. Results indicate that adolescent girls in this sample were significantly more likely to endorse depressive symptoms than were boys. To examine possible explanations for this gender difference, 2 variables were…

We describe a distress prevention training program for couples and three empirical studies that support its effectiveness. The program, Couples Coping Enhancement Training (CCET), is based both upon stress and coping theory and research on couples. In addition to traditional elements of couples programs (e.g., communication and problem-solving…

Funerals are therapeutic. They offer a time to be with others and to share memories and support. They allow opportunity to do something at a time that seems so disorganized and stressful. Funerals reaffirm the reality of death while providing an outlet for emotions. They even help individuals understand the death--to hear the ways that their own…

An attachment theory based perspective on the continuing bond to the deceased (CB) is proposed. The value of attachment theory in specifying the normative course of CB expression and in identifying adaptive versus maladaptive variants of CB expression based on their deviation from this normative course is outlined. The role of individual…

This paper reports the coping strategies characterising self-professed weak copers. In order to do so it examines strategies reported by a subset of a sample of 976 adolescents, as measured by the Adolescent Coping Scale. What is of interest in this investigation are the coping strategies of the most vulnerable adolescent group. Such information…

The effects of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, and other natural disasters will be felt by young children in the affected areas for a long time to come. This article offers tips on how to talk with children about natural disasters in order to clear up any confusion they might have, how to answer their questions with sensitivity, and how to…