Introduction

‘Stress’ is a term often used in the broader media and public debates about the changing experiences of adolescents in our society. Indeed, it has sometimes been thought of as a defining characteristic of the adolescent life stage, as part of the classic formulation of the classic ‘storm and stress’ hypothesis (Hall, 1904). It is also occasionally suggested that young people's lives today are more stressful than they used to be. From our perspective, with a focus on adolescent mental health trends, if this is true then it is potentially important.

But are young people's lives more stressful? How can we tell? What do we mean by stress? Of all the topics in this volume, this one probably caused the most internal debate and interrogation within the Changing Adolescence Programme. It is a difficult topic to pin down, as the term is vague and used in a very imprecise way. However, it is such common shorthand for people's concerns about adolescents that it seemed a mistake to ignore it. Our main aim for this review was thus to consider what we might mean by stress, to explore what concerns we might have about adolescent stress in particular, to examine what evidence there might be in relation to whether there had been a trend for stress to increase, and to see if there was evidence that stress was related to trends in mental health symptoms.

Underpinning this chapter is a detailed search for relevant evidence undertaken by Seija Sandberg and Robert MacDonald for the Nuffield Foundation. They searched scientific journals in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, sociology, general medicine and epidemiology, looking for empirical studies, systematic reviews and other reports. They also searched for textbook chapters and selected monographs, government and other survey reports, and official statistics. Keywords included stress, life events, chronic stress, psychological stress, adolescence/adolescents, psychopathology (or psychological symptoms or psychological disorder), mental health, longitudinal studies and time/secular trends in adolescent stress. Additional checks were made for literature on adolescent anxiety and worries. The main focus was on literature published since the early 1970s, and the searches produced vast numbers (well over 100,000) of citations, although in fact there were very few results specifically relating to time/secular trends.