The long-term objective of the current grant application is a systematic study of children representing a wide range of competence and exposure to a variety of stressful family experiences. Our goal is to undue partially the current neglect of the stress-resistant child, who we have defined as one who maintains mastery and competence under adverse, stressful circumstances.
Specific aims of the projected program are, first, to integrate complex and diverse data sets documenting personal attributes and experiences collected on children and parents in two very different cohorts: a community-based, central city group of 200 children and their parents, and a smaller cohort of severely physically handicapped children who had been initially mainstreamed in regular classrooms at the time they were studied by the research team. A second objective of the projected research is to conduct a short-term and selective followup study of the children and their parents to evaluate the stability of the children's adaptation and the patterns of stress to which the participating families had been exposed during the intervening period of some three years since the last research contact. The health-related significance of this research program rests in part on the fact that research efforts and support have more typically focused on understanding maladaptation and incompetence. By contrast, the study of qualities of stress-resistance in children has remained an area of puzzling neglect. Knowledge of those factors--(individual, familial, environmental) that foster good adaptation under stress would help inform mental health specialists, not only about risk exposure, but about factors that serve a """"""""protective"""""""" function against potentially debilitating experiences and circumstances. Such knowledge would foreshadow process-oriented intervention strategies with at risk persons, and provide an empirical and rational base for primary prevention research with potentially deviant individuals. It may also point to ways of stabilizing supportive adaptive trends in persons exposed to stressful circumstances.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 19 publications
