Ways of coping in adolescents with schizophrenia

Abstract

• Coping has been classified as emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping. Adolescents with schizophrenia frequently used sleep and wishful thinking coping strategies as emotion-focused copings. • Adolescents with schizophrenia endorsed high levels of stress response when compared with the healthy controls. The stress made adolescents with schizophrenia feel anxious/fearful and irritable. For this reason, adolescents who experienced more emotional irritability and anxiety/fear symptoms were likely to mobilize emotion-focused coping. • Although emotion-focused coping may be effective for short periods of time as a temporary means of reducing the impact of stress, adolescents with schizophrenia should learn problem-focused coping as the primary method for long-term ways of coping. The purpose of this study was to explore ways of coping and its association with specific stress responses in adolescents with schizophrenia. Additionally, subjects and healthy controls were compared to identify stress responses. Forty subjects were drawn from a self-management therapy study for youth with schizophrenia. Thirty community-dwelling controls were selected. A revised Ways of Coping scale and the Symptom of Stress at baseline, 6, 30 and 54 weeks measured coping and stress response. Descriptive statistics, cluster analysis and Pearson correlation provided data analysis. Thirty-two subjects were male, and eight were female. Average age was 17.25 (SD=1.37) years. Twenty-two (55%) were Caucasian; 18 (45%) were non-Caucasian. Seventeen (57%) of the 30 controls were female. The mean age was 17.10 years old (SD=1.16). Adolescents with schizophrenia used emotion-focused coping more than problem-focused coping at baseline and 6 weeks (P<0.01). Subjects reported higher stress than controls (t=4.73, P<0.01) and used emotion-focused coping with emotional stress responses (r=0.34, P=0.05). Adolescent coping strategies may persist into adulthood unless new skills are introduced. Developing effective coping skills for adolescents with schizophrenia is important for practice and future studies. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing.