Glossary

Active coping: purposeful behavioural and/or cognitive strategies intended to achieve control over a specific stressor or the effects of the stressor (e.g. emotional reaction, social implications) Adaptive coping: effective coping that permanently reduces the negative effects of a stressor, resulting in positive outcomes and improvements in functioning Cognitive distraction: thinking about something different Cognitive reframing: seeing a problem from a different point of view/in a different way Controllability of the stressor: “the degree to which the objective conditions of a stressful situation can be prevented or eliminated by the abilities, resources, or actions of a typically developing child or adolescent” (pg. 13, Clarke, 2006) DSM-5: the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, a tool used by mental health practitioners to diagnose mental health conditions ICD-10: a World Health Organisation (WHO) classification tool which lists diseases, symptoms, abnormal findings and external causes of injury. The acronym stands for the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems Information seeking: a coping strategy in which the individual finds new information about the problem in an attempt to solve it (e.g. asking others, reading about the problem) Maladaptive coping: coping which does not successfully and permanently reduce the negative effects of a stressor. Maladaptive coping may appear effective in the short term (e.g. ignoring a mounting debt), but results in increased levels of stress in the long term (e.g. debt increases and remains unpaid) Metacognition: awareness and understanding of, and reflection upon one’s own thought processes Problem-focused coping: taking practical action to tackle/remove a stressor in an attempt to reduce distress Resilience: an individual’s ability to achieve “good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development” (p. 228, Matsen, 2001) Rumination: thinking deeply. In Psychology, the term rumination often refers to focus upon the causes of a problem, rather than the solution. Rumination does not lead to active problem solving to change the situation and is associated with symptoms of depression Social referencing: when in an unfamiliar situation the infant looks to the caregiver and gauges their emotional reaction. They then use this information to inform their own response Stressor: a person, thing or event which causes a person to feel stress