ABSTRACT
Research concerning psychological problems and stress, as well as considering the incidence and nature of the problems, must also attempt to disentangle the factors determining why one individual succumbs to stress when others, apparently equally at risk, cope successfully. Examples of four very different studies which attempt to do this are the Brown and Harris study of the social origins of depression in women (1978); Hewett’s study of families with cerebral-palsied children (1970); Burton’s Family Life of Sick Children (1975); and Cohen and Taylor’s study (1972) of long-stay prisoners in a maximum security prison. These studies are all concerned, to some extent, with the reactions of the subjects to major life stresses. In all of them, as in this study, the question arises as to what it is that enables some families or individuals to cope better than others. However, as Brown and Harris state, the honest answer is that we just do not know, and the issue of coping ‘remains to be explored adequately’.
