This study posits a correlation in younger school children between high levels of current stress and reduced self-acceptance, as well as between an increase in current stress and decreased satisfaction with emotional and instrumental support. The respondents were 131 pupils aged 8 to 12 years from years 3 and 4 of a school in the Moscow region. Methodologically, the study relied on the Bazhin-Etkinds colour relationship test, which helped analyse the ranks of preferred colours associated with the concept of ‘self’ and the categories of ‘self-acceptance’, ‘self-rejection’, ‘positive evaluation’, and ‘negative evaluation’. It also employed the F-SozU K-22 questionnaire in the version proposed by Kholmogorova and Petrova to determine satisfaction and types of social support. The Perceived Stress Scale — Children (PSS-C) was used to measure current stress in children. The study showed that the need for instrumental support among younger school children increases with the intensification of stress. Emotional support and social integration in stressful situations often prove ineffective, which can be attributed to insufficient support from family and friends and the fact that children experiencing intense stress narrow their circle of contacts, thereby limiting support from others.

The results of comparing the experience of different types of stressful situations, including situations of abandonment and helplessness, and ways of coping with them in adolescence are presented. The study involved schoolchildren aged 12–14 years (x = 12.5; med = 12; sd = 0.7). Participants were 80 adolescents (39 girls and 41 boys). Methods: Color test of relationships; Adolescent Coping Scale E. Frydenberg, R. Lewis; Perceived Stress Scale for Children. The most difficult for adolescents is stressful situation of abandonment as a situation of experiencing emotional, informational and social deprivation. It was found that in terms of the level of perceived stress, the group indicated the abandonment as a more stressful situation for them is closest to the group indicated the extreme stressful situation (U = 69.0; p = 0.44) and differs from the groups indicated assessment situation (U = 51.5; p = 0.02) and helplessness (U = 82.5; p = 0.019). It was revealed that in the assessments of the projective situation, in which parents leave child alone at home for a period of time, the groups “Abandonment” and “Extremity” also turn out to be similar (mostly negative assessments on the situation were found). It was determined that the “Helplessness” group is characterized by coping strategies that indicate the relevance of applying to the social support, and for the “Abandonment” group, unlike all other groups, the ignoring strategy is more typical (p 0.05).

The article presents the results of adapting and testing of the “Perceived Stress Scale for Children” (PSS-C) on a Russian-speaking sample of adolescents aged 11 to 16 (n = 612). The study sample consisted of students from grades 5 to 8 in secondary schools in various regions of the Russian Federation (Trans-Baikal Territory, Altai Territory, Moscow Region, Leningrad Region). The results of psychometric testing indicate that the questionnaire has good internal consistency with correlations between the final score and stand alone questions being rs = [0.4; 0.64], p < 0.01; the half-form reliability rt = 0.78; the Cronbach's α = 0.741. A direct relationship between the perceived stress level and situational anxiety was shown (rs = 0.67, p < 0.01), which persisted when taking into account the age, gender, and region of residence of the respondents. These findings suggest that PSS-C has convergent validity. Factor analysis of the questionnaire revealed the presence of two factors in the perceived stress structure: 1) “Tension” and 2) “Resources”. The two-factor model of perceived stress was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis (RMSEA = 0.058, 90% CI [0.045, 0.072], CFI = 0.952, GFI = 0.977). The discriminativeness of the questionnaire was δ = 0.97. Gender differences in the level of perceived stress are shown; age differences are due to an increase in study load. The “Perceived Stress Scale for Children” questionnaire is a valid and reliable technique for diagnosing stress in adolescents aged 11 to 16. It can be used both in individual assessments and group diagnostics for monitoring of stress levels in adolescence.

The results of comparing the experience of different types of stressful situations, including situations of abandonment and helplessness, and ways of coping with them in adolescence are presented. The study in-volved schoolchildren aged 12-14 years (x=12.5; med=12; sd=0.7). Participants were 80 adolescents (39girls and 41 boys). Methods: Color test of relationships; Adolescent Coping Scale E.Frydenberg, R.Lewis; Per-ceived Stress Scale for Children. The most difficult for adolescents is stressful situation of abandonment as asituation of experiencing emotional, informational and social deprivation. It was found that in terms of the level of perceived stress, the group indicated the abandonment as amore stressful situation for them is closest to the group indicated the extreme stressful situation (U=69.0; p=0.44) and differs from the groups indicat-ed assessment situation (U=51.5; p=0.02) and helplessness (U=82.5; p=0.019). It was revealed that in the assessments of the projective situation, in which parents leave child alone at home for aperiod of time, the groups "Abandonment" and "Extremity" also turn out to be similar (mostly negative assessments on the sit-uation were found). It was determined that the "Helplessness" group is characterized by coping strategies that indicate the relevance of applying to the social support, and for the "Abandonment" group, unlike all other groups, the ignoring strategy is more typical (p<0.05).

The objective of this study was to identi-fy the match value between self -assess-ment and indirect assessment of stress by children of primary school age. The par-ticipants of the study were 132 junior schoolchildren aged 8-12 years, study-ing in grades 3-4 in a school in the Moscow Region. Indirect evaluation was measured with the projective Etkind's Color Test of Relationships; two indica-tors were chosen: the first one was the child's assignment of a stressful situation as "pleasant" (high significance) or less pleasant (low significance); the second indicator was the child's assessment of stress as a positive or negative phenome-non. Self-assessment of stress was meas-ured with the Perceived Stress Scale for Children, PSS-C. It was shown that at the age of 8-12 years, children are able toassess stress differently: negatively - as a distress, and positively - as an eustress. Depending on the degree of rel-evance of the stressful situation for the child and its negative indirect assess-ment, indicators of self-assessment of stress change. In children who perceived stress as a relevant situation and indi-rectly assessed it negatively, self -assess-ment of stress was high; if the stressful situation was indirectly assessed as posi-tive, the self-assessment of stress was low. At the same time, positive assess-ment of stress can also be an indicator of a successful coping with it or attest to the psychological defenses that prevent the child from overcoming feelings of anxiety and stress.

The article deals with the fundamental problem of psychology, devoted to the theoretical analysis of the specifics of the child's experience of stressful situations with different levels of traumatization. Along with the lack of childhood stress understanding and research, the very principles of differentiation between every day and traumatic stress remain the least studied. In the theory of post-traumatic stress, it has been proven that one of the criteria for the danger/safety of a life situation is a person's subjective evaluation of the life threat degree. Such an assessment is based on the individual's representations of psychological safety and its components, such as "internal comfort", "experience/awareness" and "positive environment". In the course of a theoretical analysis of the problem of child's stress, we have shown in the article that a child's feeling of internal comfort and stability depends on the degree of the environment activity, its ability not only to protect the child, but also to provide additional opportunities. In accordance with the purpose of the work, the primary emphasis is not on the resourcefulness of the child's social environment, but on its limitation — the phenomena of "abandonment" and "involvement", which are analyzed taking into account a specific context — the impact on the child of everyday stressors and stressors of high intensity. The methodological basis of the study was the system (B.F. Lomov) and subject-activity approaches (S.L. Rubinshtein, A.V. Brushlinsky and others), the dynamic approach to the study of personality (L.I. Antsyferova). Focusing on these approaches has allowed us to consider the child stress in accordance with a whole system of factors (the nature of the stressor, supporting/non-supporting social environment, etc.). The methods of abstraction, formalization and interpretation are used as theoretical procedures. On the basis of an expert assessment, the features of reactions to everyday stress (situations of interaction of a child with parents and peers) are highlighted, which, unlike traumatic stress (situations of an extreme nature), are not determined by the impact of a specific stressor, but arise as a response to a latent cause of a diffuse nature associated with violation of social and information safety of the child. Manifestations of everyday stress act as a child's reaction to the feeling of "abandonment", which turns out to be associated with emotional, social and informational deprivation, with the leveling or distortion by adults of the child's social roles (the role structure of interaction). The feeling of being "involved" in the context of a traumatic event is accompanied by physical deprivation and a more intense experience of emotional deprivation (emotional rejection), including the child in non-normative social relations and imposing obligations on him that do not correspond to the level of the child's physical, social and mental maturity. The phenomena of abandonment and involvement are analyzed using examples of various situations of everyday and psycho-traumatic nature.

The article is devoted to the problem of differentiation of the various traumatic events influence on the person intensity of posttraumatic stress (PTS) in different periods of adulthood. Empirically confirmed the hypothesis that during periods of middle to late adulthood posttraumatic stress occurs on various types of traumatic events. It is shown that at an older age the level of mental trauma significantly higher if individuals have experienced: the loss of close persons, life-threatening disease, serious problems of their own children, and when they witnessed the death of another person. It was determined that during middle adulthood the most traumatic event is the emotional abuse and humiliation, and during the late adulthood the loss of close persons, above all, husband / wife or child (the adult). It was found that high levels of trauma as one of the psychological consequences of the stressors of high intensity per person is most likely diagnosed in people who survived the life-threatening events, and in average age accidental, but in the elderly focused.

This article presents a review of literature concerning the impact of stress on immunity of cancer patients and the results of a research on associations between distress parameters and cell immunity in patients with breast cancer (BC) accomplished by researchers of the Laboratory for Post-Traumatic Stress of the Institute of Psychology RAS and physicians of the chair of oncology and radiation therapy of the Moscow State Medico-Stomatological University. In previous research, the authors have already shown that BC happens to be a traumatic stressor that can cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): the condition that fits the clinical picture of PTSD has been found in 24% of patients. These patients demonstrate obsessive thoughts about the disease, avoidance behavior concerning the situations that remind of it and increased physiological response as a reaction to any thought or image associated with the trauma. The patients with high levels of post-traumatic stress seem to show lower values of T-lymphocytes (CD4+). Besides, the CD4+ level seems to correlate with a number of distress parameters such as obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety and psychotic features (a number of correlations concerns also the immune regulation index CD4/CD8). The issue of direct impact of stress on the origin and development of cancer needs further investigations but so far there is evidence that intense post-traumatic reactions, which are observed in some BC-patients, can aggravate the course of the oncological disorder and influence negatively the patients' immune status, thus enhancing the risk of relapse.