Page No.221-225
G. Ramesh Upadhyaya and N.B. Havalappanavar
Karnataka Institute of Mental health, Dharwad, Karnatak University, Dharwad,
Karnataka State Karnataka State
To study the various coping strategies used by the parents of mentally challenged
individuals, fathers and mothers of 628 mentally challenged individuals are
assessed using the Coping Checklist by Rao K, Subbakrishna and Prabhu,
which taps seven coping strategies namely problem solving, positive distraction,
negative distraction, acceptance-redefinition, religion-faith, denial-blame, and
social support. Results indicate that fathers and mothers differ significantly at
0.001 level with regard to use of all the seven strategies. Other than religionfaith and denial-blame, on all other five strategies the mean is more for fathers.
Most of the coping strategies remain unutilized by most of the parents to a
proper extent. For fathers, most commonly used coping strategies are problem
solving and acceptance-redefinition. For mothers, most commonly used coping
strategies are problem solving, religion–faith and denial-blame. Both fathers
and mothers use problem-focused coping more often than the emotion-focused
coping. Fathers use problem-focused coping more often than the mothers and
mothers use emotion-focused coping more often than the fathers. Higher
educational level, nonagricultural occupation, higher income and urban status
of the family are the important factors predicting higher levels of coping.
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