Although many researchers including Lazarus et al. have published papers on coping, there is no comprehensive report on concrete coping behavior corresponding to a variety of hypothetical situations. We prepared a questionnaire to investigate what coping behaviors patients of mental disorders (including anxiety disorder and depression) and psychosomatics would apply when they encoutered significant situations or incidents in their lives. A total of 21 such incidents or situations were selected for the questionnaire, which included financial problems, health problems, troubles in various relations, targets, and self-evaluations. We compared the results of the questionnaire among a mental-disorders-group, a psychosomatic-group, and a healthy control, and examined the contribution of the coping style to pathology. Referring to past studies, we limited the coping behaviors to the following five categories:(1) problem-solving, (2) support-seeking, (3) reappraisal, (4) relaxation, and (5) avoidance. We adopted a unique method of studying which coping behavior each person would possibly apply to the 21 incidents and situations. Results of comparison showed some significant characteristics. The sychosomatic-group more frequently selected the coping behav-iors of (1) problem-solving and (3) reappraisal while the mental - disorders-roup often selected those of (2) support-seeking, (4) relaxation, and (5) avoidance.

View full abstract