Psychological topics, Vol. 16 No. 1, 2007.
Original scientific paper
The role of emotional expression and coping with school-related stressful situation in perception of moods and somatic symptoms among adolescents
Barbara Kalebić-Maglica
orcid.org/0000-0002-6278-5582
; Department of psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rijeka
Abstract
Stress is common in the lives of adults, but also in the life of adolescents too. Researches show that frequent stress contributes to somatic symptoms among adolescents and have found that daily hassles are better predictors of psychological and somatic health than major stressful life events.
The present study investigated the relationship between emotional expression, coping with a school-related stressful situation, perception of somatic symptoms and the mood of adolescents. The study was conducted on a sample of 545 elementary and high school students and it has two parts. In the first part of the study participants completed an emotional expression measure and in the second part they were asked to recall the most stressful situation they experienced during
the past month and evaluate how they coped with it, how they felt after the situation and if they noticed some somatic symptoms in the period of seven days after the stressful events.
The results suggest that avoidant coping has positive effects on adjustment in the short time period and that it is positive predictor of positive mood. In the longer time period avoidant coping has a negative effect on health. Emotional-focused
coping is not an adaptive way of coping in the school-related stressful situation because it is a positive predictor of negative mood and perception of somatic symptoms. Emotional expression is a positive predictor of somatic health but it is also an important moderator of the relationship between coping and mood.
Keywords
Adolescence; school-related stress; emotional expression; coping; moods; somatic symptoms
Hrčak ID:
20384
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2007.
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