Minor stressors and coping with everyday stress in secondary-school students: The Learned Helplessness Model revisited

In the Learned Helplessness model, the experience of uncontrollable aversive events is a key factor in the appearance of helplessness symptoms. In its latest version, the Hopelessness Theory of Depression, this model posits that hopelessness expectancies, which consist of perceiving the future in a hopeless way, depend on attributing negative events to stable and global causes. In this study we explore whether minor stressors and coping style also predict hopelessness expectancies and hopelessness depression symptoms. We used the Problem Questionnaire (Seiffge-Krenke, 1995), the Coping Across Situations Questionnaire (Seiffge-Krenke, 1995), the Hopelessness Scale (Beck et al., 1974), the Hopelessness Depression Symptoms Questionnaire (Metalsky & Joiner, 1997) and the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1961) in a sample of 373 students (aged 11-18 yrs). Results showed that minor stressors predicted hopelessness expectancies and hopelessness depression symptoms. The regression analyses revealed that active coping predicted significantly lower hopelessness scores, while withdrawal coping predicted significantly higher hopelessness scores. Our results revealed that withdrawal coping also predicted significantly higher hopelessness depression symptoms scores. These findings appear to support the approach of Soria, Otamendi, Berrocal, Caño & Rodríguez-Naranjo (2004) whose findings emphasize the importance of recovering the perception of non contingency in the prediction of hopelessness.