Predictors of Depression in a Sample of African-American Homeless Men: Identifying Effective Coping Strategies Given Varying Levels of Daily Stressors

In a sample of African-American, homeless or insecurely sheltered men, the occurrence of discrete stressors in the prior week contributed to the experience of depressive symptoms among this generally stressed population. Reliance on active, problem-focused coping strategies as opposed to emotion-coping strategies was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms contradicting the hypothesis that active coping is counter-productive for African-American men. However, depressive symptoms increased, with added uncontrollable stress, even for active copers, contradicting a stress-buffering hypothesis. Under conditions of high uncontrollable stress, problem-focused coping was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms than emotion-focused coping, however, additional discrete stressors exerted less impact on the level of depressive symptoms among the emotion-focused copers than the active, problem-focused copers.