Coping with accidental injury.

Coping styles and perceptual defense were studied in 20 accidentally injured adult males during hospital stay and 28 months later via clinical psychiatric and surgical examinations, the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale, Ways of Coping Checklist, Impact of Event Scale, Basic Character Inventory, the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, State Anxiety Inventory and Defense Mechanism Test. Coping styles, particularly emotion-focused coping, were more strongly correlated with underlying psychopathology than with severity of injury. Coping styles remained stable during the period of study and did not correlate with perceptual defense, state anxiety, personality traits or symptoms of post-traumatic stress. However, six specific coping efforts predicted patients who suffered from short- and long-term negative consequences with a specificity and positive predicting power of 100% and sensitivity of 69%. Results correspond to previous studies of coping with chronic illness, and suggest that somatization following physical trauma is better explained with reference to personal meaning than to a fright-model as suggested in the post-traumatic stress criteria of the DSM-III-R.