CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Adolescence is often a stressful period during development because it involves a pivotal transition from childhood dependency to adulthood dependency and self-sufficiency (Smith, Cowie, & Blades, 1998). One major challenge that adolescents encounter during their teenage years involves acquiring a sense of personal agency in what often seems to be a recalcitrant word.
Adolescents in our societies are viewed as leaders of tomorrow. They are endowed with enormous potentials and talents to succeed in their different ambitions and set goals for life. For these goals to be achieved, it requires dedication, sacrifices, self-discipline, motivation and cordial relationship between them as their parents, peers (both in school and social gathering), and from the environment with which they find themselves. Adolescents at this level are saddled with a lot of responsibilities and challenges (Imonikebe, 2009) which may sometimes result in stress. They need good mental health and functional social supportive networks to be able to succeed in these tasks and pursuits. As the responsibilities and challenges increase and new social relations are established, adolescents, sometimes become uncertain of their abilities to meet these demands Dwyer & Cummings (2001). Difficulties in handling the ensuring stressor often lead to decreased performance in areas like academic achievements/performance and interpersonal relations, as such increasing psychological distress and negative attitudes towards learning and life (Dwyer & Cummings, Salami, 2006). All these invariably pose challenges to the much sought qualities social support network, hence the need to elaborate on the concept of social support.
Social support (SS), perception to Bames (1854) is the perception and actuality that one is for, has assistance available from other people, and that one is part of a supportive social network. These supportive network resources can be categorized into emotional support (nurturance), tangible support (financial assistance), informational support (advice), and/or companionship support (sense of belonging). However, other scholars have also view social support in their own perspective. For example Hagihara, Tarumi, and Miller (1998) defined social support as the provision and receipt of tangible and tangible goals, services, and benefits/such as encouragement and reassurance) in the context of informational relationships (e.g. family, friends, co-workers, co-students, and lecturers). It has also been argued that social support is too complex to be limited to a single theoretical concept (Vanx, 1988), as a result, comprehensive models that incorporate the major elements of most current conceptualization of social support have been developed (Cutronor & Rusell, 1987).