Coping and well-being in adolescence

Attention toward coping in healthy adolescents is the result of the important role of protective and risk factors that could influence well-being. If adolescents improve their coping skills, they can perceive and react to stressors in ways that yield positive health outcomes. Adolescents experience many stressor situations, ranging from pubertal changes to family and peer relationship conflicts. This chapter will review the research published in the last 10 years on coping skills in adolescence and their association with well-being. Articles were found using the most relevant electronic databases, PubMed, Psychology and Behavioural Science, PsycINFO, Sciencedirect and Scopus, employing various search strategies: the search terms used included MeSH, headings, text words or keywords relevant to the following terms: "Coping", "adolescent", "well-being", "psychosocial". Text word and thesaurus searches were used to minimize chances of missing relevant articles. Identified articles were examined for additional references. The search was limited to English-language literature published in the last 10 years (2005-2015). We considered the full text of the selected papers to examine all the specific characteristics of each study. One of the eligibility criteria was that the papers dealt with adolescents, but we also considered studies where parents were the participants, only when they constituted a source of information about their adolescents’ coping strategies and health. We excluded all the articles related to specific health diseases, such as chronic illnesses (cancer, diabetes, etc.) or other specific pathologies, physical, psychiatric or contextual (i.e. eating disorders, sleep deficits, terrorism/emergency events, mental disorders). Some important topics associated with adolescents’ psycho-social well-being that emerged from the review of the literature were: Health related quality of life and health beliefs area; Mental well-being area (psychopathology symptoms); Perceived stress and coping strategies to front the daily problems area: SES and coping, stable internal resources, positive coping, coping related to academic performance; Relationship and perceived social support area and Family influences on adolescents’ well-being. These information will be discussed and directions for future research and psychological interventions will be proposed.