This is the first comprehensive Handbook to examine the various models of stress, coping, and health and their relevance to nursing and related health fields. No other volume provides a compendium of key issues in stress and coping for the nursing and allied health professions. In this new edition, the authors assembles a team of expert practitioners and scholars in the field to present the broad range of issues that relate to stress and health such as response-oriented stress, stimulus-oriented stress, stress, coping, .

Few publications have changed the landscape of contemporary psychology more than Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman's landmark work, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Its publication in 1984 set the course for years of research on the dynamic processes of psychological stress and coping in human beings. Now more than a quarter-century later, The Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping pushes the field even further with a comprehensive overview of the newest and best work in this dynamic subject. Edited by Susan Folkman and comprising chapters by the field's leading scientists, this new volume details the expanded knowledge base that has emerged from extensive research on stress and coping processes over the last several decades. Featuring 22 topic-based chapters -- including two by Folkman -- this volume offers unprecedented coverage of the two primary research topics related to stress and coping: mitigating stress-related harms and sustaining well-being in the face of stress. Both topics are addressed within their relevant contexts, including chronic illness, calamity, bereavement, and social hardship. The Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping is an essential reference work for students, practitioners, and researchers across the fields of health psychology, medicine, and palliative care.

Highlighting the interplay between basic research and intervention, this volume focuses on common stressful life experiences that present significant challenges to children's healthy development. Fifteen stressors are discussed with regard to both short-and long-term effects. The authors identify factors that explain variability in children's adjustment to these stressors and evaluate preventive interventions designed to facilitate coping. Notable chapters include a discussion of the many uncontrollable stressors to which inner-city youth are exposed and a thorough treatment of children's adaptation to divorce. Each chapter follows a common outline, allowing comparison among stressors.

Distilling years of experience in educating psychiatric patients and their families about depression, Jon Allen has written a practical book that addresses the challenges depressed patients face on the road to recovery. Allen advocates approaching depression by focusing on the importance of hope, and he helps patients understand depression through two simple ideas: catch-22 and stress pileup. This book conveys how the symptoms of depression impede all the things depressed persons must do to recover, thus defusing self-criticism while encouraging patients to take satisfaction in small steps toward improvement. And the concept of stress pileup encompasses a developmental perspective respecting the full range of accumulated biological, psychological, and interpersonal stresses that play into depression. This broad understanding helps patients become more compassionate toward themselves and puts them in a stronger position to make use of professional care. Coping With Depression is written for a general audience, including depressed persons and their family members, as well as professionals seeking a readable integration of current knowledge that they can use to educate their patients. Although written in nontechnical language, the book provides a sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of the psychological development of depression, the neurobiology of the illness, and the full range of evidence-based treatment modalities. All material is buttressed by extensive references to theoretical, clinical, and research literature. Coping With Depression emphasizes the concept of agency, encouraging readers to take an active role in their recovery. Countering today's trend toward exclusive reliance on antidepressant medication, the book employs the perspective of developmental psychopathology to integrate psychosocial and neurobiological knowledge. The book explains how biological vulnerability is intertwined with stress stemming from insecure attachment, childhood adversity, stressful life events, emotional conflicts, and problems in close relationships. Going far beyond the "chemical imbalance," the author illustrates how the experience of depression is linked to changes in patterns of brain activity as evidenced by neuroimaging studies. Coping With Depression will help readers understand the development of depression from a biopsychosocial perspective appreciate how depression is compounded by related conditions, including bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, personality disorders, general medical conditions, and suicidal states understand how recovering from depression entails working on many fronts, including improving physical health, participating in pleasurable activities, countering negative thinking, resolving internal conflicts, and-above all-establishing more stable and secure attachment relationships become knowledgeable about the treatment options that facilitate coping, including cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, and psychodynamic psychotherapy as well as medication and combined treatment appreciate the centrality of hope in recovery from depression and the challenges to hope that depression poses To maintain hope, patients, their family members, and clinicians must face the seriousness of the illness of depression and the daunting obstacles to recovery, including catch-22 in all of its manifestations. Throughout the book, Allen reiterates the theme of agency: depressed persons can use their intelligence to understand their illness and do something to recover and remain well, making use of help from others along the way.

I am very pleased to have been asked to do abrief foreword to this second CRISP volume, The Social Context o[ Coping. I know most of the participants and their work, and respect them as first-rate and influen tial research scholars whose research is at the cusp of current concerns in the field of stress and coping. Psychological stress is central to human adaptation. It is difficult to visualize the study of adaptation, health, illness, personal soundness, and psychopathology without recognizing their dependence on how weil people cope with the stresses of living. Since the editor, John Eckenrode, has portrayed the themes of each of the chapters in his introduction, I can limit myself to a few general comments about stress and coping. Stress research began, as unexplored fields often do, with very sim ple-should I say simplistic?-ideas about how to define the concept. Early approaches were unidimensional and input-output in outlook, modeled implicitly on Hooke's late-17th-century engineering analysis in which external load was an environmental stressor, stress was the area over wh ich the load acted, and strain was the deformation of the struc tu re such as a bridge or building.

How do people cope with stressful experiences? What makes a coping strategy effective for a particular individual? This volume comprehensively examines the nature of psychosocial stress and the implications of different coping strategies for adaptation and health across the lifespan. Carolyn M. Aldwin synthesizes a vast body of knowledge within a conceptual framework that emphasizes the transactions between mind and body and between persons and environments. She analyzes different kinds of stressors and their psychological and physiological effects, both negative and positive. Ways in which coping is influenced by personality, relationships, situational factors, and culture are explored. The book also provides a methodological primer for stress and coping research, critically reviewing available measures and data analysis techniques.

"...how a man rallies to life's challenges and weathers its storms tells everything of who he is and all that he is likely to become." —St. Augustine It has long been understood that how a person adjusts to life stresses is a major component of his or her ability to lead a fulfilling life. Yet it wasn't until the 1960s that coping became a discrete topic of psychological inquiry. Since then, coping has risen to a position of prominence in the modern psychological discourse—especially within the personality, cognitive, and behavioral spheres—and, within the past decade alone, many important discoveries have been made about its mechanisms and functioning, and its role in ongoing psychological and physical health and well-being. A book whose time has come at last, the Handbook of Coping is the first professional reference devoted exclusively to the psychology of coping. Reporting the observations and insights of nearly sixty leading authorities in stress and coping from a wide range of affiliations and schools of thought, it brings readers the state of the art in coping theory, research, assessment, and applications. In orchestrating the book, the editors have scrupulously avoided imposing any particular slant or point of view, other than the need to foster greater eclecticism and cooperation between researchers and clinicians concerned with the phenomenon of coping. The Handbook of Coping is divided into five overlapping parts, the first of which serves to lay the conceptual foundations of all that follows. It traces the history of coping from its origins in psychoanalytic theories of unconscious defense mechanisms, and provides an exhaustive review of the latest conceptualizations, models, and constructs. The following section provides an in-depth exploration of current research methodology, measurement, and assessment tools. Part Three explores key facets of coping in a broad range of specific domains, including everyday hassles, chronic disease, cataclysmic events, and many others. The penultimate section focuses on individual differences. Among important topics covered here are coping styles and dispositions; the role of family, social support, and education; and coping behaviors across the life span. The final section, Part Five, is devoted to current applications. Clinical parameters are defined and a number of specific interventions are described, as are proven techniques for helping clients to improve their coping skills. A comprehensive guide to contemporary coping theory, research, and applications, the Handbook of Coping is an indispensable resource for practitioners, researchers, students, and educators in psychology, the health sciences, and epidemiology. Of related interest ... EGO DEFENSES: Theory and Measurement —Edited by Hope R. Conte and Robert Plutchik This book explores the nature and manifestations of defense mechanisms and traces ego defense theory and research from Freud's initial conceptualization through recent work in object-relations theory and other psychoanalytically oriented approaches. It provides clinical guidelines for diagnosing, assessing, and dealing with defenses, reviews empirical research techniques, and indicates their value in development and in psychotherapy. This volume should be of value to theoreticians, clinicians, and researchers interested in finding appropriate tools for measurement of defense mechanisms. 1994 SOCIAL SUPPORT: An Interactional View —Edited by Barbara R. Sarason, Irwin G. Sarason, and Gregory R. Pierce The study of social support and its relationship to personality, health, and adjustment is one of the fastest growing areas of research and application in psychology. This book contains integrative surveys of clinical and field studies, experimental investigations, and life-span explorations. It approaches social support as an important facet of interpersonal relationships and shows its undesirable, as well as its positive, features. 1990 (0-471-60624-3) 528 pp.

The only book currently available that focuses and multicultural, cross-cultural and international perspectives of stress and coping A very comprehensive resource book on the subject matter Contains many groundbreaking ideas and findings in stress and coping research Contributors are international scholars, both well-established authors as well as younger scholars with new ideas Appeals to managers, missionaries, and other professions which require working closely with people from other cultures