Correlates of coping style in patients with multiple sclerosis

To examine certain correlates of patterns of coping with stress, 43 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) read a vignette describing a stressful social situation and completed the Ways of Coping Checklist describing how they would cope with the stressful situation. Performance on a test of solving problems in everyday living was positively correlated with the total number of coping responses and with the number of problem-focused strategies, but neither vocabulary nor verbal abstract reasoning were related to coping patterns. In agreement with earlier work, increases in psychological distress were positively correlated with endorsement of emotion-focused coping strategies but unrelated to the use of other coping responses.