Stress is experienced by everyone, everyday. Stress is inescapable. No matter what age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status there is stress. Although stress itself is difficult to define and is often criticized being to broad or vague. Prevailing definitions of stress tend to focus on the, “environmental circumstances or conditions that threaten, challenge, exceed, or harm the psychological or biological capacities of the individual” (Grant et al., 2003, p. 448). Adolescence, in general, is a “period of heightened anxiety and stress” (Walker, 2002, p. 24). When looking specifically at what causes adolescent stress every day, it is likely to find that not only is schoolwork a major cause, but also that difficulty in relationships …show more content…
“Mental health disorders during the critical developmental stages of childhood and adolescence are associate with educational underachievement, high-risk sexual behavior, early parenthood, and impaired functioning in social, work, and family relationships” (Young & Dietrich, 2015, p. 35). Adolescence has been identified as a period of significant stress due to the quantity and intensity of transitions that occur that in turn can lead to psychological problems “associated with conduct disorder symptoms and substance use indicators,” (Low et al., 2012, p. 4) as well as, “including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and poor self-esteem” (Murray, Rieger, & Byrne, 2013, p. …show more content…
202). Perfectionism can be split into two categories: adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism. Although only maladaptive perfectionism can be related back to stress, it is characterized by a concern over mistakes and persistent doubts about one’s actions, socially prescribed perfectionism, a perceived pressure to be perfect, feelings of discrepancy between expectations and results, and negative reactions to imperfections” (Luo et al., 2016, p. 202). The reason that maladaptive perfectionism can be correlated to stress is because perfectionists tend to be unable to achieve their high personal standards that they set for