Comparison of Coping Skills in Peptic Ulcer, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Normal People

Introduction & The role of stress in gastronomic diseases has been known since a long time ago. IBS and peptic ulcer have been more investigated and are more suspected to be affected by stress. Recently some (such as Lazarus) believe that stress, itself alone, could not affect person but this is assessment and coping skill of person which determine this effect. This research was designed to investigate the coping skills in peptic ulcer, IBS and normal people. This is an analytic study in which 41 patient with IBS, 41 with peptic ulcer and 91 normal people were selected from people who referred to internist clinic. Using brief COPE scale, data were collected and analyzed by SPSS. The result showed that the religious and substance use as two coping skill were the highest and lowest skills used by men and women in tree groups respectively. The result also showed that three groups were different in active coping, using emotional support, using instrumental support, positive reframing, planning, self- blame and venting. This study showed that patient groups used more negative coping skills, while normal people mostly used effective positive skills.