Examining the Buffering Role of Communal Coping on the Stress-Depression Relationship Among Farmers Affected by Herdsmen Attacks in Benue State

The recurring herdsmen-farmer conflicts in Benue State, North Central Nigeria, impose severe psychological stress on smallholder farming communities, and culturally embedded communal coping practices may serve as protective factors against the stress-to-depression pathway. This study empirically examines whether communal coping moderates the relationship between conflict-related stress and depression symptoms among farmers in Benue State. A cross-sectional survey with moderation analysis is applied to 280 adult farmers from three conflict-affected local government areas, recruited through community stratified sampling. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised measures conflict stress, the Communal Coping Scale adapted for Nigerian rural contexts measures the moderator, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 measures depression. Moderation analysis via PROCESS Macro in SPSS tests the buffering hypothesis. Literature from North Central Nigerian conflict psychology identifies shared lament, communal resource pooling, and prayer gatherings as the primary communal coping expressions, with strong evidence for their stress-buffering role in other sub-Saharan African conflict contexts. The Communal Coping Theory by Lyons and colleagues and the Stress-Buffering Hypothesis provide the theoretical framework. Findings are expected to demonstrate a significant buffering effect of high communal coping on the stress-depression pathway, informing community-based psychosocial interventions for conflict-affected farmers in Benue State. Keywords: communal coping, conflict stress, depression, farmers, Benue State.