Gender Differences in Adolescent’s Health: the Effect of Coping Mechanism

Introduction: Previous studies have suggested that male and female experience different types and severities of physical and psychological health symptoms. This study examined whether in the case of adolescents gender differences in physical and psychological health symptoms could actually be the result of differences in coping mechanism. Various factors have an influence on which coping strategies are mobilized under specific circumstances like age and gender. The present paper focuses on the interrelationships between the ways of coping and some health-related variables in adolescence. Objectives: (i) To find out gender differences affecting physical and psychological health symptoms. (ii)To find out gender differences affecting coping styles.(iii) To ascertain the relationship between coping styles and both physical and psychological health symptoms, in both male and female adolescents. Methods: The participants of the present study comprised of 100 adolescents male 50 and female 50 and they were from senior secondary schools and graduate schools recruited from Aligarh. They are adolescents and their age ranged from 13 to 18 years. Measures: Brief Cope Scale was developed by (Carver. 1997). The Brief Cope is a Likert type questionnaire that contains 14 strategies although the Brief COPE contains 28 items. WHO-QOL Scale: World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment, the WHOQOL-100 is a cross-culturally valid assessment of well-being. Assessment is operationalized through 100 items representing 25 facets organized in six domains. Result and Conclusion The results of this study suggest that doctors, school counselors and family therapists may want to take gender differences in coping styles into account when seeing adolescent patients for physical or psychological health symptoms, and find ways to help the adolescents cope more effectively with their stressors.