Coping is a series of strategies people create to manage a certain stressor, making it easier to adapt to living with the disease. Research shows that in PwP personality features tend to be more apprehensive, impulsive and cautious. PwP are often exposed to stressful situations as they experience impairment and disabilities. Roger, et al described four coping styles that are either oriented to emotional-based strategies or rational ones. Rational and detachment styles express a sense of adaptation, usually found in males, while emotional and avoidance styles reflect a lack of adaptation and are more commonly found in females.

A cross-sectional study including PwP attending the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City in April 2019 was carried out. All PwP were invited to voluntarily participate and were given questionnaires that included socio-demographic variables and the validated Spanish version of the Coping Style Questionnaire (CSQ-40) which considers four factors: rational coping (RATCOP), detachment coping (DETCOP), emotional coping (EMCOP) and avoidance coping (AVCOP). Participants were instructed to think about any problem or stressor due to or worsened by their disease.

We included 30 females and 50 males. The mean age was 64.4 ± 11.6 years. 51% of PwP scored highest on RATCOP, 30% did on DETCOP, 16% on EMCOP and 0% on AVCOP. Coping style was only related to gender with RATCOP being more prevalent in males (63.5% vs 32.4%, p=0.003) and DETCOP in women (44.1% vs 23.8%, p=0.04).

The most common coping styles among Mexican PwP are RATCOP and DETCOP which are considered as adaptative and positive. Both males and females tend to use rational coping styles. To our knowledge, no other study has used the CSQ 40 in PwP before. However, further studies are needed.