The purpose of the study is to determine the role of the sense of coherence and ego-resiliency as buffers for maladaptive coping among juveniles with different levels of delinquency. The study included 561 juveniles referred by a family court to youth education or probation centers throughout Poland. We used SEM to search for relations between variables and the critical ratio test for differences between groups. The results demonstrate that in both groups, the relationships between the components of the sense of coherence and the emotional style were negative. In both groups, the sense of comprehensibility was significantly associated with the search for social contacts. The impact of ego-resiliency on social-diversion coping was significantly stronger for the group with high compared with low demoralization. The study demonstrate that juveniles with a high degree of delinquency are more prone to emotion-oriented coping. Both groups of juveniles use two types of avoidance style to a similar extent. The results show that the stronger the sense of coherence, the less often juveniles cope with stress by reducing emotional tension and by escaping into substitute activities. Furthermore, our findings reveal the dark side of ego-resiliency.
Keywords: coherence; coping; delinquency; ego-resiliency; juveniles; maladaptive.