Abstract

This study investigated the stressful life event, mood, coping strategy and social support of a high school student group. The information was gathered through structured interviews with a sample of 178 students from 20 high schools in Seoul area by stratified random sampling. The findings are summed up as follows. Free responses of stressful life events were categorized into 13 areas. Among these, highly stressful areas, each of which contributed to more than 10% of the total stressful life events, were as follows: difficulties arising within their academic achievement(27.2%), conflicts with their peer(21.2%), problems that occur within the family system(19.2%) and problems with the school activity (13.5%). Coping strategies the students used when they experienced stress were mostly passive ones such as seeking emotional support and avoidant behavior. Whereas active coping strategies such as problem solving activity and information gathering were manifested less frequently. And this finding suggests that the students generally had inappropriate coping strategies. It is surprising that they tended to prefer their friends as a supporter to their parents or school teachers when they distressed. This means that the supporting function of their parents or school teachers is relatively weak. The results were discussed with respect to adjustment problems of the high school students. On this basis, directions and implications for prevention and educational program were discussed and suggested.