BackgroundPrevious research has generally indicated that disadvantaged socioeconomic groups tend to experience poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL). In an effort to extend the literature, this study proposes that coping flexibility is a stress buffer that mitigates the adverse effects of low socioeconomic status (SES).MethodsThe participants comprised 150 Indians (53 % women; mean age = 36.38 years) from high, medium and low socioeconomic groups. Their levels of perceived stress, coping flexibility, subjective SES and HRQoL were assessed individually through household interviews.ResultsThe findings provide support for the hypothesised moderating role of coping flexibility between subjective SES and HRQoL (p < 0.001). In the low SES group, participants higher in coping flexibility reported significantly better HRQoL than those lower in coping flexibility. Moreover, coping flexibility moderated the association between perceived stress and HRQoL (p = 0.001). Of the participants who experienced higher levels of stress, those higher in coping flexibility reported better HRQoL than those lower in coping flexibility.ConclusionsThis study enriches the literature by revealing the beneficial role of coping flexibility on HRQoL among individuals low in SES. These new findings highlight the potential importance of psychological interventions that strengthen the flexible coping skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

The mental health of women living in poverty is a growing public health concern, particularly in India where the burden of illness is compounded by critical shortages in mental health providers and fragmented services. This was an exploratory study which sought to examine low-income women’s perceptions of mental illness and its management in the context of urban poverty in India. This research was prompted by the lack of empirical studies documenting how women in marginalized sections of society understand mental illness. Data were collected through a combination of 10 focus group discussions and two individual interviews with a total of 63 women residing in low-income areas of Mumbai. Social representations theory was used to explore shared meanings of mental illness among women in this setting. Thematic analysis of the data showed that women use the expression “tension” to talk about mental illness. Tension was described both as an ordinary part of life and a condition having its origins in more profound gender-related stressors, particularly pressures surrounding motherhood, chronic poverty and domestic conflict. Approaches to managing tension were pluralistic and focused on the resumption of social roles. Findings are consistent with other studies in similar cultural contexts, suggesting a shared, transnational character to women’s distress and the need for scholarship on women’s mental health in low-income settings to be more attuned to gendered forms of marginalization.

A wealth of past studies documented that individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) are more susceptible to both acute and chronic life stress than those of higher SES, but some recent evidence documents that not all individuals from the lower SES group experience immense stress. The present study was grounded in theories of coping and psychological adjustment, and a dual process model was formulated to address some resolved issues regarding socioeconomic disparities in health. For a robust test of the proposed dual process model, data were collected from two Asian countries—Hong Kong and Indonesia—with different socioeconomic heritage and conditions. Consistent with the predictions of our model, the present findings revealed that coping flexibility was a psychological mechanism underlying the positive association between social capital and health for the lower SES group, whereas active coping was a psychological mechanism underlying this positive association for the higher SES group. These patterns of results were largely replicable in both Asian samples, providing robust empirical support for the proposed dual process model.