EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Relationship of chronic stress, social support, and coping style to health among Namibian refugees

Olive Shisana and David D. Celentano

Social Science & Medicine, 1987, vol. 24, issue 2, 145-157

Abstract: This study investigates how social support and coping style affect the relationship between a traumatic chronic stressor and health status. A population of 88 Namibian refugees living in an equatorial region of Africa participated in the study. The central hypothesis was that social support and coping style moderate the relationship between length of stay in exile (a proxy measure of chronic stress) and health status (symptoms of generalized anxiety disorders, self-reported physical health status and length of stay in hospital). The results show that when social support is high the relationship between length of stay in exile and all three health outcomes is substantially reduced. When social support is low, the relation between stress and poor health outcomes is high. Coping style moderates the relationship between length of stay in exile and period of hospitalization but has no effect on level of anxiety or perceived health status. When both social support and coping style are simultaneously considered, the best results emerge.

Keywords: stress; social; support; coping; refugee; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(87)90247-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:24:y:1987:i:2:p:145-157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:24:y:1987:i:2:p:145-157