Co-rumination involves friends spending a great deal of time encouraging each other to excessively discuss problems, with content being largely negative (Rose, 2002). Co-rumination appears to strengthen the bonds between best friends, while ironically exacerbating internalizing symptoms. Co-rumination is conceptualized as a mutual dyadic process, but little is known about the reciprocity of excessive problem discussion. The balance of college students' (N = 601) self- and other-focused co-rumination with their best friend was assessed via an online survey. Contrary to expectations, inconsistent and weak evidence was obtained for differentiating self- and other-focused co-rumination, and their balance. Specifically, self- and other-focused co-rumination were highly correlated, similarly correlated with other study variables, and not differentiated in exploratory factor analysis. However, the interaction of self- and other-focused co-rumination in a model including individual characteristics and adjustment yielded differentiated results. Friendship intimacy was associated with self-, but not other-, focused co-rumination. Indicating that balance may matter, anxiety was associated with high self-focused co-rumination in the context of low other-focused co-rumination. Additionally, mean levels of all individual traits (rumination, excessive reassurance seeking, social perspective taking, perfectionism, negative problem orientation) and adjustment variables (anxiety, depression, social anxiety, friendship quality) differed as a function of co-rumination balance, as assessed by a one-item direct measure. The validity and utility of distinguishing self- and other-focused co-rumination is contingent on further exploration with dyadic data and perhaps modified assessment. Rumination and excessive reassurance seeking indicated vulnerability for co-rumination, which appears to be a primarily anxious process.

Background: Stress is increasing rapidly in society and especially among those studying. Some studies highlight the unique potential of universities, as a social coping resource, to help students maintain mental health and reduce stress. However, there is limited knowledge regarding how universities are reacting to this stress. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how universities react to the problem with stress among business students and how they act as a social coping resource. Further, this paper aims at investigating where more efforts are needed. Method: The paper has applied a qualitative research method, using a multiple case study where 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from business schools and student health organizations from 4 Swedish universities. The study applied a thematic analysis. Findings: Universities react and serve as a social coping resource by working preventative, establishing a positive study environment, easing the transition and adjustment to the university, and by providing information and feedback to the students. Further, they are looking into course dispositions where workload should be evenly distributed. The student health organizations are available to everyone, no matter reason and offer group-activities and individual conversations in accordance with what the students need help with regarding stress. The university also tries to promote certain coping strategies, where the business schools focus on problem-focused coping and the student health organization on emotion-focused coping. Even though some collaboration is found, especially at the beginning of programs, there is a need to further work on the infrastructure between different instances at the university to react faster to issues regarding student stress. Conclusion: Universities tries to work preventative and react fast to the issue, but students tend to seek support when they already have been stressed for a long time. Universities focus a lot on students starting their studies and tend to treat student by student rather than applying a holistic and long-term perspective. To react better to this problem there is a need for a better infrastructure to better serve as a social coping resource, where the student health organization are included more during the studies. Contributions: The study has contributed to further knowledge of universities’ role as a social coping resources and their reaction to student stress, and further contributes to what type of support or activities that can be improved from the universities side to reduce stress among students. The study gives an insight to universities' infrastructure and support system regarding to reduce students' stress.

Adolescents confront a plethora of physical and emotional changes, especially those alterations surrounding puberty. Body image disturbances have become commonplace with high school students, and school personnel seem to have had little success in fighting this problem. Teenagers with body dissatisfaction may also be at risk for mental health problems, such as depression and eating disorders. Gifted adolescents may be particularly susceptible to mental health issues due to a number of specialized issues including overexcitability and social coping ability (Gatto-Walden, 1999). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among body dissatisfaction, gender, type of student (gifted or typical), overall overexcitability, social coping, and an interaction between gender and type of student. A diverse group of 489 participants from six Illinois school districts participated in the study, including 268 females (54.8%), 216 males (44.2%), 4 students identifying as "other" regarding gender (0.8%); one student did not respond to that question (0.2%), and they ranged in age from 14 to 20 (M = 16.6, SD = 1.2). The overall regression model was statistically significant, F(5, 469) = 9.31, p < .001, R2 = .09. The adjusted R2 was .081, which indicated that 8.1% of the variance in body dissatisfaction was explained by the model. This effect was medium in magnitude and consistent with previous research with body dissatisfaction. The results support the idea that gender, overall overexcitability, and social coping significantly explained body dissatisfaction, but being gifted (i.e., type of student) did not significantly contribute to the regression model. In addition, the results did not support a gender by type of student interaction. These findings are interesting in that previous research has linked giftedness and overexcitability, but these variables were not strongly correlated in the current study. However, this information has yielded some important implications for school counselors, clinical mental health counselors, and counselor educators. The author also discussed some areas for further research.

Social support is associated with mental and physical health. It is important to consider culture in order to understand stress responses to everyday hassles and use of coping strategies. The current investigation hypothesized that (1) Ukrainian college students representative of a collectivistic culture would have lower levels of perceived stress than would US college students representative of a highly individualized culture, (2) Ukrainian college students would have evidence of greater social support compared to US college students, and (3) social support would mitigate differences in perceived stress between the two cultures. Based on 61 US participants recruited from Brigham Young University and 100 Ukrainian participants recruited from Sumy State University in Ukraine and using linear regression to predict college students perceived stress level from culture and MANOVA to investigate the differences in social support between two cultures, American and Ukrainian respondents scored similarly on measure of perceived stress. Moreover, American respondents reported using more social support for coping with stress than did Ukrainian respondents. These results challenge the hypothesis that collectivistic cultures use more coping strategies based on social support than do individualistic cultures and suggest that certain groups within an individualistic culture may cope with stress with social support.