[The feeling of hopelessness and ways of coping with stress in women after preterm delivery].

Objectives: The goal of this work was to compare ways of coping with stress used by women after preterm delivery and term delivery, as well as to determine possible connection between hopelessness and ways of coping with stress in these two groups.

Materials And Methods: 33 patients after preterm delivery and 54 after term delivery participated in the study The Beck Hopelessness Scale questionnaire (by Beck) to investigate hopelessness. the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations questionnaire (by Endler and Parker), and a personal questionnaire were used in the study.

Results: The two groups of women differed in their styles of the task-oriented coping. This style was significantly less frequent in the repertory of remedial behaviors in women after preterm delivery. Hopelessness reached similar levels in both groups, and was estimated as mild, and significantly correlated with coping styles with stress in both groups under study.

Conclusions: A positive correlation between hopelessness and the emotions-oriented coping is very characteristic for both groups of women. This indicates that the tendency to use the emotions-oriented coping grows with an increasing feeling of hopelessness.