The Role of Social Support in Maintaining the Well-Being of Adolescents in the Face of Stress

1402 Words6 Pages
The Role of Social Support in Maintaining the Well-being of Adolescents in the Face of Stress Todays society places high value on the psychological well-being of its individuals. With growing knowledge and interest in mental illness, social support has been recognised as an important area of study. With more research on social support comes more effective intervention of this support and with better-predicted results. Particularly, research has focused on the coping of adolescents in the face of stress and the correlation between social support and positive or negative outcomes from coping with stressors. Many avenues of social support have been explored in relation to their impact on the coping of adolescents facing stress. These avenues include the different sources of support, such as family, friends and community organisations, and also the type of support received, whether it be emotional, informative or tangible. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the role of social support on the well-being of adolescents facing stress. This will be demonstrated by exploring the overriding assumption that social support provides adolescents with the support that allows them to appraise stressful situations and provide positive coping strategies. The use of the term well-being in this essay is used to describe the positive outcome of successfully coping with stress and therefore contributing to better mental health. The term stress will be used to explain when the relationship between the environment or an event and an adolescent is perceived as exceeding the individual’s resources. Adolescence is characterised as a transitional stage of development between childhood to early adulthood. Within this time frame, of roughly 11-19 years of age, an adolescent will experience physical and identity development. Adolescence is widely recognised as a period of time

More about The Role of Social Support in Maintaining the Well-Being of Adolescents in the Face of Stress

Open Document