Coping styles set up by asthmatic patients.

In the Lazarus' transactional model of stress, each individual when facing a stressful situation, set up specific adjustement strategies called coping, including a meaningful pattern of cognitive, behavioral, emotional and somatic responses. Coping strategies used by asthmatic patient are relatively unknown. The objective of this study was to assess the usual coping strategies. We administered the WCC (a shortened version of Lazarus and Folkman's questionnaire) to 116 asthmatic patients and 880 healthy adults French subjects (males and females). A principal component analysis, followed by varimax rotations yielded three factors accounting for about 68.2% of the total variance. They were interpreted as Problem-focused Emotion-focused and Social-support seeking types of coping. These two first dimensions of coping were closed to those generally described in the literature. Asthmatic patients used more emotion-focused strategy than the control group. These results and their theoretical and practical implications are discussed.