ABSTRACT
Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967, life for the Palestinians has been characterized by multiple social problems. The effects of stress associated with major life events and of political stressors on mental health, psychological well-being, and ongoing life patterns of traumatized Palestinian families have shown that the experience of certain life events, or clusters of these events, can have deleterious effects on subsequent mental health status. The ecocultural context of a family is important in determining a person’s subjective experience. Role strains are hardships, challenges, conflicts, or other problems that people come to experience as they engage over time in normal social roles. Coping strategies are the constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person. Sociopolitical satisfaction may be conceived as the extent of a person’s subjective gratification with sociopolitical context that confers quality of life.
