Stress Coping Mechanisms and Psychological Distress among Adolescents in Informal Settlements in Tororo Municipality, Tororo District

Adolescents in informal settlements face significant poverty-related stress and psychological distress, yet limited research exists on stress coping mechanisms in East African contexts. This study investigated the relationship between stress coping mechanisms and psychological distress among adolescents in informal settlements of Tororo Municipality, Uganda. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was employed with 376 adolescents aged 13-19 years from Kasoli and Bison informal settlements, selected through multistage cluster sampling. Data collection utilized the Brief COPE inventory for coping mechanisms assessment and an adapted psychological distress scale measuring poverty-related psychological difficulties. Statistical analysis included simple linear regression using SPSS version 28.0. The investigation revealed a statistically significant but weak positive correlation (r = 0.144, p = 0.005), with psychological distress explaining only 2.1% of the variance in coping mechanism utilization (R² = 0.021), contradicting theoretical expectations and indicating that factors such as individual resilience, social support availability, cultural factors, and resource access play larger roles in determining adolescent coping responses than psychological distress severity alone. This finding suggests that psychological distress-focused interventions alone are insufficient and supports multi-factorial intervention approaches that address environmental stressors, strengthen social support systems, and build individual coping capacity simultaneously. Mental health professionals should develop comprehensive assessment protocols while community organizations should implement programs addressing both environmental stressors and individual coping capacity. Future research should investigate the role of resilience, social support, and resources in mediating the coping-psychological distress relationship among adolescents in informal settlement contexts to better understand the substantial unexplained variance in this complex relationship.