Mental Health, cont..psychology notes-b. Behavioral Models and c.

Behavioral Models:  Here the individual has an active role in relation to managing environmental demands. Coping involves learned adaptations.  Successful adaptations lead to stress-reduction and the strategies used become part of the behavioral repertoire for coping with stress.  If escape, avoidance or active coping with a stressor is not successful, the individual may learn to endure the stressor and adapt through learned helplessness.

c.  Coping Style Models:

    Fairly stable styles that emphasize thoughts and attitudes as variables in coping - Coping here is a form of problem solving.  For example Valliant (1970's) identified four kinds of adaptive mechanisms or characteristic ways of coping -  mature, neurotic, immature and psychotic. 
     Those who used mature mechanisms were healthier and happier.  For Lazarus coping is struggle not success, managment not mastery.

Cognitive- Appraisal Model:  Coping occurs in situations that a person perceives as taxing and requiring effort.  People choose a strategy depending on their cognitive appraisal of the situation.  Because the situation is constantly changing, coping is a dynamic process.  Choosing the most appropriate strategy requires constant re-apprisal of the situation.

Note two modes of coping
1.  Emotion focused is directed toward feeling better - managing emotional responses.
2.  Problem focused is directed toward eliminating, managing or improving a stressful condition.