Editorial: Coping With the Pediatric Coping Literature: Innovative Approaches to Move the Field Forward

Abstract

First paragraph: Chronic illnesses, injuries, and other health conditions (herein “conditions”) such as sickle cell disease, chronic pain, and burns are life-disrupting challenges for children and their families. Coping strategies can be defined as “cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of a person” (Lazarus, 1991, p. 112). In the context of chronic pediatric health concerns, children and their caregivers/parents must cope with the management of the condition itself, its indirect impact and associated treatment on their daily life (e.g., effect on school engagement), in addition to unrelated “everyday” stressors (e.g., parenting, peer conflict) (Turner-Cobb, 2013). Despite a substantive body of literature exploring coping strategies and quality of life in children living with a chronic condition, several theoretical and empirical gaps remain, including a large number and variable application of coping frameworks or models together with vague and inconsistent operationalization of coping strategies. For instance, Rudolph et al. (1995) proposed a conceptualization of coping that distinguishes between coping responses, goals, and outcomes. Coping responses are actions initiated in relation to a perceived stressor, while the goals are the reasons behind the engagement in a coping response, and the outcomes are the consequences of the coping response. Yet, these different components of coping have been used interchangeably in the context of pediatric chronic health conditions, with assessment or conceptualization of each aspect of coping varying substantially within and across health concerns. Consequently, the goal of this Research Topic “Coping with the Pediatric Coping Literature: Innovative Approaches to Move the Field Forward” was to bundle innovative and cutting-edge research that increases our understanding of coping strategies and their underlying mechanisms within pediatric chronic health conditions.