Individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) are faced with the challenge of coping with a chronic, progressive disease that will alter their lives in numerous ways. The present study was mainly aimed at understanding the coping strategies used by patients with Parkinson’s disease. For this, 100 patients of Parkinson’s disease aged 45 to 70 years were selected from the patients who were attending the OPD of neurology departments at PGIMS, Rohtak, PGIMER, chandigarh, and Ram Manohar Lohiya Hospital, Delhi. Data were collected by administering Folkman and Lazarus’ Ways of Coping Questionnaire. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (Mean, SD, S7”, and KA”) to ascertain the normalcy of data, tratios to compare the two groups in terms of their mean scores of eight measures of coping, and Discriminant Function Analysis to examine the joint contribution of all the eight variables in differentiation of two groups. Results revealed that patients with Parkinson’s disease scored significantly low on Confrontive Coping, Self Controlling, Seeking Social Support, Accepting Responsibility, Planful Problem Solving, and Positive Reappraisal. In Discriminant Analysis, Positive Reappraisal, Self Controlling, and Distancing emerged as potent discriminators classifying the two groups correctly by 83.5%. Overall findings revealed the patients with Parkinson’s disease to be significantly low on both the problemfocused and emotion-focused ways of coping. Implications have also been discussed.
Journal of Indian Health Psychology Vol. 7, No. 2, March, 2013