Journal of Psychiatry

The relation between coping strategies and social support among patients with Schizophrenia

25^th World Summit on Psychology, Psychiatry & Psychotherapy

October 19-20, 2017 | San Francisco, USA

Rasha Salah Elsayed Eweida

Alexandria University, Egypt

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Psychiatry

Abstract:

Schizophrenic patients have often been found to differ from healthy controls in how they react to and cope with stressful life events that occur in their daily lives. They possess a relatively limited repertoire of coping strategies and tend to use emotional-focused and avoidance-focused coping strategies, rather than thinking actively on how to solve their problems. Perceived social support appears to directly decrease the use of these harmful coping strategies and to provide a basis for positive thinking and cognitive restructuring. So, schizophrenic patients need to mobilize their social support system to cope effectively with stressful life events and daily hassles. The present study aimed at identifying the relation between coping strategies and social support among patients with schizophrenia. The study was conducted at the psychiatric outpatient clinics of two hospitals in Alexandria namely El¬-Maamoura Hospital for Psychiatric Medicine in Alexandria and Ras-EL Teen General Hospital. The subjects of the study were a convenient sample of 150 patients with schizophrenia, fulfilling the criteria of definite diagnosis of schizophrenia with no co-morbidity, intellectual disabilities, organic brain disease, drug/ alcohol abuse or other psychiatric mental disorders, attending the outpatient clinics for follow up and being able to communicate in a coherent and relevant manner. According to the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that studied outpatients with schizophrenia resort to endorse emotional-focused and avoidance-focused coping strategies more frequently than task-focused coping strategy to deal with stressful life events. Social support was proved to be the independent predictor of the task-oriented coping strategy.

Biography :

Rasha Salah Elsayed Eweida is a Lecturer at Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health Department at Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University, Egypt. She has completed her Master’s thesis and PhD from the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. She is teaching the theoretical lectures and practical training with different psychiatric diagnosis including schizophrenia, depression, and mood disorder etc., for the 4th year nursing students at EL-Maamoura Hospital for Psychiatric Medicine, in Alexandria. Moreover, she is also teaching the Nursing Students about how to provide the appropriate nursing care interventions for psychiatric patients at EL-Maamoura Hospital for Psychiatric Medicine, in Alexandria during the practical training hours.