Background: One of the features of modern life is ever increasing stress. Stress is an epidemic in the 21st century that commonly affects all of us on a daily basis. Adolescence can be a stressful time as this age group people are dealing with the challenges of puberty, changing expectations and coping with new feelings. Coping is the process of managing demands (external or internal) that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person. Coping consists of efforts, both action-oriented and intrapsychic. The relationship between coping and a stressful event represents a dynamic process. With this background study was conducted to assess the coping ability of tribal, rural and urban school children of Mysuru District. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study conducted in Tribal, rural and urban Mysuru.A Pre tested semi-structured proforma which included general profile and socio-demographic profile of student was used. Information about coping skills was collected through Tobin Coping Strategies Inventory 32 item scale. Statistical analysis: Descriptive statistics like mean and standard deviation were applied. Anova test for comparison of means between three groups. Independent t test was applied for comparison between two groups. The association was expressed statistically significant at p-value less than 0.05. Results: In regards to problem solving, cognitive restructuring, expressing emotions, social contact, wishful thinking, social withdrawal, self-criticism there was a significant difference among 3 groups with p-value <0.05, with regards to problem focused engagement and emotion focused engagement there was a significant difference among 3 groups with p-value< 0.05 with tribal high school participants having higher scores and with regards to engagement there was a significant difference among 3 groups with p-value <0.05 with tribal high school participants having higher scores.Conclusions: The present study was a community based cross sectional study conducted among tribal, rural and urban high school students of Mysuru district aged 14-16 years which revealed tribal school participants had better coping strategy next to urban. Males differed from females with respect to their coping strategies especially in rural and urban participants.
Who copes up well? – comparative assessment among urban, rural and tribal school children in Mysore district, Karnataka
