Coping Under Extreme Conditions: Do Coping Dispositions Matter.

ABSTRACT: The role of coping dispositions in predicting coping with a potentially traumatic event (PTE; situational coping) has been bypassed. We explored the degree to which the dispositional coping of 103 mountain rescuers predicted coping with their last PTE. Dispositional venting of emotions and turning to religion explained more than half of the variance in the use of the same strategy to cope with the PTE. Most coping dispositions predicted about 30% to 40% of the variance in comparable situational coping. Dispositional denial did not predict situational use of denial. Multivariate dispositional coping style explained a great deal of the variance in most situational coping responses. Dispositional coping was more relevant than situational to participants' global psychological distress and explained about one-fourth of the variance in distress. These results suggest that most dispositional styles considerably impact coping with PTE but to the extent that varies across different coping styles.

Relationship of Anxiety, Depression, Stress, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms with Disease Severity in Acutely Ill Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients.

We aimed to investigate depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms and their relationship with disease severity in acutely ill hospitalized Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. A single-center cross-sectional observational survey study screening for psychiatric symptoms using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 Items (DASS-21) and the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) questionnaires was performed including a total of 169 acutely ill COVID-19 patients. All patients were adults and of white race and developed respiratory insufficiency during hospitalization. Demographic, clinical and laboratory data were evaluated as predictors of psychiatric symptoms. We hypothesized that higher intensity of COVID-19 symptoms and higher oxygen requirement would be associated with occurrence of depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms. Depressive symptoms were absent in 29%, mild in 16%, moderate in 27.8%, severe in 10.7% and extremely severe in 16.6% patients. Anxiety symptoms were absent in 43.8%, mild in 6.5%, moderate in 17.2%, severe in 5.3% and extremely severe in 27.2% patients. Stress symptoms were absent in 78.7%, mild in 4.7%, moderate in 7.1%, severe in 7.7%, and extremely severe in 1.8% patients. A total of 60.9% patients had no PTSD symptoms, 16% had undiagnosed symptoms, and 23.1% met the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis. All psychiatric symptoms were more pronounced in female patients, depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with prior chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Only depressive symptoms were significantly associated with higher intensity of COVID-19 symptoms and higher oxygen requirement. Acutely ill hospitalized COVID-19 patients presented a high prevalence of emergent psychiatric sequelae, especially in females, and more severe COVID-19 influenced mostly the severity of depressive symptoms.