From a very early age, the school environment is where a child or young person can directly and indirectly experience stress. The impact of the pressures and expectations within the school environment are certainly among the most frequently reported stressors by adolescents (de Anda et al 2000). Relevant stressors include fear of success or failure, test or performance anxiety and fears associated with the unrelenting academic pressure often imposed in today’s school environment. In a study by de Anda (2000), apart from concerns about future goals, school-related items show the highest recorded frequency in high school students. The pressure of time, achievement and expectations in the form of tests, grades, homework and pressures from parents were reported as being stress factors that were felt ‘often’ to ‘very often’ on a daily and weekly basis by adolescent respondents.

When the school environment imposes a significant continuing source of stress, children tend to avoid school altogether. These children almost become school phobic and appear to experience relatively significant emotional and physical effects even at the very thought of going to school. Unfortunately, such children can inadvertently become categorised as persistent truants and labelled as exhibiting behavioural problems.

Children can face other types of stress at school apart from those associated with scholarly activities. Bullying has become a significant social problem in contemporary school life. Kidscape (http://www.kidscape.org.uk) is a national charity that supplies sensitive advice for bullied children as well as providing individuals and organisations with the practical skills and resources necessary to keep children safe from harm. Kidscape (2009) feels that this kind of work is vital given the frightening statistics that:

The loss of parent, either through death or through separation/divorce, is a devastating loss that permanently changes the family dynamics. Although some children are well cared for when facing such stressors, other longitudinal studies show that even among adults who claim to have coped with the loss of a parent in childhood, certain life cycle events, such as marriage, can sometimes trigger a surge of maturational grief responses (Moos 1986). It is also now acknowledged that children whose parents divorce are exposed to multiple losses and adversities that may have a negative impact on the child’s health, well-being and achievement in life many years later (Papalia et al 1999).

Separation and divorce – and the consequent single parenthood – inevitably bring changes in financial circumstances. Compared with children in ‘intact’ families, children in one-parent families are more likely to experience sibling conflict, family disruption and less support. They are also more likely to have household responsibilities, more contact with siblings, less family cohesion, and less support, control or discipline (Papalia et al 1999). Children suffering the loss of a parent (whatever the cause) may suffer higher rates of enuresis, delinquency, a range of illnesses including hypertension and mental health problems, and are more likely to leave school at an earlier age (Burges, 1994, Jenkins and Urstrun, 1998 and Papalia et al., 1999). Longitudinal studies following-up children who have experienced the loss of a parent have found that some of them are still experiencing problems 10 or more years later (Koenen et al 2007, Papalia et al 1999).

Differences in what is termed the ‘emotional tone’ of the family can have profound effects on children (Mountain 2008). In particular, children who live in situations of neglect or abuse are more likely to experience disorganised/disorientated attachments to their parents, have negative, ill-conceived self-concepts, find it difficult to engage in social interactions and consequently have difficulty forming social relationships. These children may develop particular characteristics and personality traits that in turn make them less well liked. For example, there is an abundance of evidence to suggest a link between abuse and children’s low self-esteem, emotional maladjustment, dependency, underachievement, depression, faltering growth, deliberate self-harm and other psychological distress in later life (Papalia et al 1999).

Many forms of mental health problem in parents have a direct impact on the quality and nature of parenting. Therefore nearly all types of mental health problems in parents have been linked to an increased likelihood of behavioural and emotional problems in children and young people (Graham et al 1999). Research on the children of depressed parents signals a clear causal relationship between depression in parents and problems of adjustment and depression in their children. Similarly, toddlers of depressed parents are more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioural disturbances, delayed language and cognitive developments (Steinhausen & Verhulst 1999).

The period of adolescence (whenever this is said to commence) has traditionally been described as a particularly critical period of physical, psychological and social change for young people, often characterised by emotional and psychological stress and, indeed, clusters of crises. However, although contemporary studies concur with some of these claims in some cases, they are not always generalisable to all adolescents. Indeed, in most cases adolescents are remarkably level-headed and well equipped to resolve many of the problems they encounter during this transitional period (Erwin 1998).

Nevertheless with the continuing rise of reported mental illness episodes and suicidal behaviours in adolescence (Stoleb & Chiribogo 1988), along with clear associations between stress and psychological symptoms (Jenson et al 1991), one can logically and safely conclude that for some individuals within this relatively large section of society certain life stressors can appear to have a significant and dramatic effect on their lives. According to Lau (2002), this can be partly explained by the fact that negative life events, especially if cumulative in nature, negatively affect adolescents’ adjustment in various ways. Similarly, it must be remembered that the foundation for adolescence begins to be laid during early childhood (Jackson & Rodriguez-Tome 1995).

As well as exposure to violence, abuse and divorce, which we have already noted, other examples of adolescent life stressors include disciplinary action taken against them, incidence of rejection/humiliation by others, moves to new environments, terminations of friendships or relationships, and conflict with relatives or peers. Across the various stressors the various research studies have chosen to study, there is little evidence to detect patterns of specificity in any of them apart from the broad outcomes associated with sexual abuse (McMahon et al 2003). As noted earlier, it is well recognised that the nature of the family climate or environment is a key context that sets the stage for adolescent development and affects adolescent’s reactions to life stressors (Moos 2002). In particular, the family and peers provide a source of social support that helps the young person facing life stressors to maintain his or her coping efforts. The quality of social support and peer relations (rather than the number of social supports) has been demonstrated to be associated with favourable mental health outcomes. A growing sense of group membership also appears to play a key protective role in negating the effects of life crises in adolescents (D’Attilio et al., 1992 and Morano et al., 1993).

Given the centrality of the family environment, it may come of no surprise to learn that 50% of suicidal adolescents are found to come from broken homes – family environments characterised by divorces or single-parent structures. Adolescents who have experienced violence or sexual abuse are also at higher risk of negative mental health outcomes. Parents of suicidal adolescents tend to be more depressed, consume more alcohol, and have lower self-esteem and increased anxiety.

Gender differences have been found to exist. There is a tendency for female adolescents to report more sensitivity than boys to interpersonal stressors and to those related to peer values regarding dress and appearance (Coleman 1990). There is a dearth of research on the links between ethnic differences and life stressors. However, a few studies indicate that issues surrounding identity, including the impact of prejudice and stereotypes are additional stressors for young people from different cultural groups (Phinney & Alipuria 1990).

The notion of ‘family stress’ will now be examined briefly before moving on to explore the social resources and coping responses children, young people and family members may utilise to manage life stressors.

Boss (1988 p 704) claims that the family, as a group, is not coping if even one member manifests stress-related symptoms. If this stringent criterion is adopted then family stress can be seen as a natural and logical extension of individual stress applied to the family domain and, importantly, both the individual and family are of equal importance when examining the impact of life’s stressors.

To paraphrase Hobfoll & Spielberger (1992), family stress is the state in which both family members and the family as a unit are challenged by the environment in a way that overtakes the individual or collective resources and threatens the well-being of individuals within the family, or the family as a whole.

Whereas Moos’ (2002) framework has a tendency to be directed to individual stress, McCubbin & McCubbin’s (1993) resiliency model is family-centred and focuses not only on the factors that produce crisis/non-crisis in families but also how family members adjust and how the family adapts during and after crisis.

A focus on stressors is key in virtually all theories of family stress but different theorists envisage different conceptions of the nature of those stressors. Traditionally, research has tended to focus on stressors being caused by pressures for change on the family system or the accumulation of demands for change. According to Hill (cited in Health Advisory Service 1995), a stressor consists of those life events or occurrences that are sufficient magnitude to bring about change in the family system.

Family stressors can derive from interpersonal, environmental, economic or sociocultural events or experiences (Friedman 1998) and they can be acute, chronic, major, minor and/or ongoing (Hobfoll & Spielberger 1992). The perception and interpretation of stressors is highly subjective and individual to each family unit. For example, what one family may perceive as challenging opportunities may be perceived as threatening and overwhelming by another.

Like stress responses in the individual, family life stressors can be accumulative or ‘pile up’ (McCubbin & Patterson 1983). Likewise, a family stressor event is only a stimulus that holds the potential for beginning the process of change of stress. Whether it does or does not depends on the family’s response to the stressor (Boss 1988). According to Boss, family crisis differs from, but precedes, stress when stress is so significant that the family’s resources are no longer adequate to maintain the structure. In families who face adversity, boundaries are not maintained, customary roles and tasks are no longer performed and individual members may no longer function at optimal levels. However, it should be noted that crises could result in families redefining themselves. A positive outcome arising from, say, the admission of a child to a paediatric intensive care unit, may result in a higher level of family functioning after recovering from the crisis event.

‘Stress’ and ‘coping’ are terms used ubiquitously in the literature without specific definition and consensus as to the meanings of the concepts. A useful definition of coping comes from Cohen & Lazarus (1979), who view coping as:

Analysis of the processes involved and resources available to individuals and their families has found coping to comprise individual, family and/or socially based strategies. We must also remember that a multicultural perspective on the subject is vital and that, cross-culturally, individual, family and socially based coping strategies are not only sometimes different but can often be in direct conflict with each other.

To achieve the goals of coping the child/young person needs to engage in a number of activities or tasks. However, just as there are an infinite number of life stressors so there are an infinite number of coping strategies and responses. Nevertheless, a number of protective factors seem to increase a child’s capacity to cope with stress, these include (Spender et al, cited in Townley 2002):

Years of research appear to have failed to identify either higher-order or core categories of specific coping responses. Almost every activity can be considered to be a way of coping and each one has its body of research. These can be behavioural, cognitive or emotional in nature and include problem solving, information seeking, planning, negotiation, compliance, self and other blame, help seeking, social support, opposition, venting, selecting optimisation, compensation, rumination, disclosure and discussion, primary and secondary control, optimism and positive illusions to name but a few.

Additionally, individual predisposing factors influence a child’s or young person’s capacity to cope. These include age, gender, temperament, arousal, imagery and/or coping response styles, which in turn may influence both the perception of the problem and the ability to motivate resources or engage the support of others. Current research into coping tends to favour longitudinal designs, repeating measures over a short time or over several years, often including markers of the progress of stressful events. The criteria for measuring the outcomes of the coping process usually focus on the psychosocial, physical and functional status of the child or young person at a given single or multiple points.

Two points are worth noting at this stage. First, whereas some of the aforementioned coping strategies may be effective in dealing with stress in the short term, we also need to examine the predicted longer-term consequences of these strategies. Second, whereas it is hoped that many of the coping strategies children and young people employ are adaptive, maladaptive ways of coping exist, including catastrophising and panic, social isolation, blame of others, denial, withdrawal confrontation, aggressive behaviour and even substance misuse (de Anda et al 2000).