About: Communal coping

Communal coping is the collective effort of members of a connected network (familial or social) to manage a distressing event (Lyons, Michelson, Sullivan and Coyne, 1998). This definition and the scope of the concept positions communal coping as an offshoot of social support. According to Lyons et al. (1998), the communal coping conceptual framework emerged for two reasons. First, to expand the research that supports the claim that the coping process sometimes requires individual and collective effort (e.g. Fukuyama, 1995). Second, the need for a specific framework for investigating the cooperative characteristic of coping. To support the need for a framework which explores the social aspect of coping as a combined effort, the authors argued that the communal coping conceptual framework em