The coping flexibility of neurasthenia and depressive patients

Abstract This research performed a comparison between the coping flexibility of neurasthenia and depressive patients with that of participants in the control groups. The Coping Flexibility Questionnaire was administered to 100 neurasthenia and 100 depressive patients as well as their corresponding control groups. Results of the two studies indicated that: (1) compared with the control group, neurasthenia patients’ coping flexibility proved to be partially impaired, including cognitive flexibility and coping effectiveness. (2) Depressive patients’ coping flexibility suffered a more severe level of impairment and exhibited decreases in almost every respect, including perceived controllability, cognitive flexibility, strategy-situation fit, and coping effectiveness. The theoretical and clinical implications of this study are proposed while the limitations of the current research are discussed.

[1]  Meyer Friedman,et al.  Type A Behavior and Your Heart , 1974 .

[2]  C. Chiu,et al.  Discriminative facility and its role in the perceived quality of interactional experiences. , 2001, Journal of personality.

[3]  C. Cheng,et al.  Perceptual style and behavioral pattern of individuals with functional gastrointestinal disorders. , 2000, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[4]  A. Beck.  Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders: A. T. Beck , 1987, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[5]  P. Kennedy,et al.  Coping effectiveness training for people with spinal cord injury: preliminary results of a controlled trial. , 1999, The British journal of clinical psychology.

[6]  S. Folkman,et al.  Appraisals of controllability and coping in caregivers and HIV+ men: testing the goodness-of-fit hypothesis. , 2001, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[7]  Assessing coping flexibility in real-life and laboratory settings: a multimethod approach. , 2001 .

[8]  S. Folkman,et al.  Stress, appraisal, and coping , 1974 .

[9]  Y. Gan,et al.  Flexible coping responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome-related and daily life stressful events , 2004 .

[10]  R. Lazarus.  Coping theory and research: past, present, and future. , 1993, Psychosomatic medicine.

[11]  Cecilia Cheng.  Cognitive and motivational processes underlying coping flexibility: a dual-process model. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.