ABSTRACT
As we move toward the next millenium, young people appear to be increasingly affected by stress. Whereas it was earlier assumed that stress is something that mainly affects adults, it is now widely accepted that teenagers, and even children, face stressful events that have the potential to severely disrupt their lives and negatively affect their psychological adjustment and health. Acute and chronic stress plays an important part in understanding normal as well as disrupted adolescent development (Compas, Orosan and Grant 1993). Stress has been shown to be linked to wide-ranging maladaptive behaviours such as depression, suicide, and substance abuse (Compas et al. 1993; Siegel and Brown 1988; Wills 1986).
