Gender Comparisons of Self-Identified Strengths and Coping Strategies: A Study of Adolescents in an Acute Psychiatric Fa
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Gender Comparisons of Self-Identified Strengths and Coping Strategies: A Study of Adolescents in an Acute Psychiatric Facility Edgar H. Tyson • Tiffany S. Baffour Paul DuongTran
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Published online: 17 February 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This study examined gender comparisons of adolescents in psychiatric acute care who responded to an intervention designed to help youth self-identify strengths and coping strategies. A cross-sectional survey design and a random, census-based sampling approach were employed to obtain data from 281 adolescents. During the study period, a small group method was used to deliver a solutionfocused, brief-therapy intervention to these adolescents. These data revealed that 38.2% identified an ‘‘arts-based’’ strength, 26.7% of the sample utilized a ‘‘relational’’ strategy and 26.1% reported a variety of sports and physical activity as a means of coping with crises. Controlling for psychiatric diagnosis, we found gender differences and similarities in the types of strengths identified by adolescents in this study. One application of these results is that they support the continued practice of engaging young clients in clinical settings using strength-based perspectives. Keywords Adolescents Mental health Strengths-based perspectives Solution-focused therapy
Introduction Research on strength-based evaluation and assessment of children and adolescents (referred to as youth throughout this paper) in psychiatric and mental health settings has recently emerged in the literature (e.g., Epstein and Sharma 1998; Steen et al. 2003). Although 15 years have passed since the US Department of Education (1994) advocated the use of strengths-based assessment of youth who have been E. H. Tyson (&) P. DuongTran Graduate School of Social Service, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. S. Baffour University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, Baltimore, MD, USA
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diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, it is a relatively new practice (cf. Walrath et al. 2004) in school, community and clinical settings. Some of this previous research has focused on the creation of a new classification of ‘‘character strengths’’ (Steen et al. 2003) to offset the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association 1994). However, with few known exceptions (e.g., Dworkin et al. 2003; Tyson and Baffour 2004), none of this research examines strengths, coping strategies and other positive youth activities from the perspective of youth. Understanding how youth construct and define their strengths and coping strategies would be an important step toward the development of strength-based models of youth assessment and intervention research.
Relevant Literature Review Youth Strengths and Positive Mental Health Most of the research on youth has focused on behavior problems and other negative outcomes (Santrock 1997). In the field of psychology, ‘‘positive psychology’’ (Rich 2003) has been placed at the
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