70 Reads
·
57 Citations
To study the various coping strategies used by the parents of mentally challenged individuals, fathers and mothers of 628 mentally challenged individuals are assessed using the Coping Checklist by Rao K, Subbakrishna and Prabhu, which taps seven coping strategies namely problem solving, positive distraction, negative distraction, acceptance-redefinition, religion-faith, denial-blame, and social support. Results indicate that fathers and mothers differ significantly at 0.001 level with regard to use of all the seven strategies. Other than religion-faith and denial-blame, on all other five strategies the mean is more for fathers. Most of the coping strategies remain unutilized by most of the parents to a proper extent. For fathers, most commonly used coping strategies are problem solving and acceptance-redefinition. For mothers, most commonly used coping strategies are problem solving, religion–faith and denial-blame. Both fathers and mothers use problem-focused coping more often than the emotion-focused coping. Fathers use problem-focused coping more often than the mothers and mothers use emotion-focused coping more often than the fathers. Higher educational level, nonagricultural occupation, higher income and urban status of the family are the important factors predicting higher levels of coping. The early focus on study of stress was followed by focus on study of coping as well. Van (1999) opines that research in future needs to shift the focus from assessing stress and distress, to assessing resilience and adaptation, because there is need for an understanding of the factors that contribute to resilience and successful adaptation. The coping strategies are classified into two types. One is problem-focused and the other one is emotion-focused. In problem-focused coping the person is attempting to deal constructively with the stressor or situation it self; whereas, in emotion-focused coping the focus is on dealing with the person's own fears, anger or guilt.