The Infl uence of Stressors on the Development of Psychopathology

M. Lewis and K.D. Rudolph (eds.), Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-9608-3_11, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Stressful life experiences represent the most well-established environmental predictor of psychopathology across the life-span. Research focused on children and adolescents, in particular, has documented a predictive relation between stressors and both internalizing psychological symptoms (such as depression and anxiety) and externalizing psychological problems (such as aggression and delinquency) (Grant, Compas, Thurm, McMahon, & Gipson, 2004 ). There is also growing recognition that exposure to some degree of stress may be necessary for the development of problem-solving abilities and adaptive coping strategies (Hetherington, Parke, Gauvain, & Locke, 2005 ). Nonetheless, many basic questions remain about stress processes and effects on mental health and psychopathology. These include the following: (1) Which types and what magnitude of stress exposure are associated with positive and negative mental health outcomes for most individuals of a given age? (2) Do specifi c types of stressors predict specifi c types of mental health problems? (3) Are there types of stress exposure that promote positive outcomes in some mental health domains (e.g., internalizing) but negative outcomes in others (e.g., externalizing)? (4) What biological, cognitive, and emotional processes mediate associations between stressors and mental health problems? (5) What factors moderate those relations? (6) How do specifi c stressors, moderators, mediators, and mental health problems relate to one another reciprocally and dynamically across development? In this chapter, we will summarize the progress that has been made toward answering those questions, conceptualization and measurement issues that have limited that progress, and recommendations for the next steps with stress research. The chapter is informed by fi ndings from the most recent reviews on stress and child and adolescent psychopathology as well as new developments that have occurred since those reviews.