Country beginning to suffer distress (5)
I believe the answer is:
spain
'country' is the definition.
(Spain is a country)
'beginning to suffer distress' is the wordplay.
'beginning to' suggests taking the first letters.
'distress' becomes 'pain' (I've seen this before).
The first letter of 'suffer' is 's'.
's'+'pain'='SPAIN'
(Other definitions for spain that I've seen before include "Iberian country" , "Iberian 4" , "Take pains to go there" , "European nation" , "ditto" .)