Adolescent Coping with Poverty-Related Stress

Adolescents living in poverty face numerous stressors that are toxic for their mental health and well-being. There are effective strategies for coping with poverty-related stress that have been shown to reduce psychological symptoms in the face of this stress. Primary control coping includes active strategies such as problem solving and emotional expression, which appear to be effective for coping with poverty-related stress. Even more effective are secondary control strategies, which help the adolescent think differently about uncontrollable stressors such as poverty-related stress and are strongly related to fewer psychological problems.

However, stress itself weakens an adolescent’s ability to use the cognitively demanding primary and secondary control coping, and instead appears to encourage avoidance and other disengagement coping responses that are not as effective. Primary and secondary control coping skills are teachable, and increasing their use can be part of effective intervention efforts for teens living in poverty.