ABSTRACT
The topic of coping with stress has occupied a central place in health psychology for almost four decades. A number of volumes have been devoted to defi ning what coping is, whether it improves health and well-being; and if it does do so, how it works, for whom, at what times, and in what ways (e.g., Aldwin, 1994; Carpenter, 1992; Eckenrode, 1991; Folkman, 2011; Gottlieb, 1997; Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Snyder, 1999; Snyder & Ford, 1987; Zeidner & Endler, 1996). Researchers have created checklists of coping strategies to measure coping (e.g., Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989; Endler & Parker, 1990; Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986; Moos, 1993) and taxonomies of coping strategies to understand those measures (Skinner, Edge, Altman, & Sherwood, 2003). We have some clues as to which coping strategies are associated with better physical and mental health, although this is tempered by personality, situation, place, and history. We have so much research on coping-a basic search combining the terms coping and stress led to 1,652 articles-and yet know so little that some researchers have suggested that we do away with the concept of coping altogether (Coyne & Gottlib, 1996).
