Stressful events and their correlates among adolescents of diverse backgrounds.

Stress has been defined in terms of the impact of significant life events that are experienced by individuals and the family as a whole. This paper examines the association of stressful events with measures of well-being among a sample of high school youth from diverse social groups. It focuses on the important subgroups of adolescents and uses a single set of measures to explore the relation between stressful life events and such correlates as mental and physical health, school performance as measured by grades, and deviance. The chapter explains stressful events and their correlates within a large heterogeneous sample of adolescents indicates that stressful events are indeed associated with negative outcomes for youth of all social classes, all ethnic groups and in all types of families. It discusses the sensitivity to stress should be linked to the first findings reported on the domains of stress — personal, familial, and school.