Life Event Stress and Coping Strategy in the Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Kee, Baik Seok; Oh, Se Man; Kim, Chee Jeong

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
This study was aimed to investigate and compare the life event stress unit, coping strategy and other risk factors in coronary artery disease patients who visited Cardiovascular Division of Dept. of Internal Medicine Chung-Ang University Hospital.
METHODS
Review of medical chart, semi-structured interview, Scale of Life Events and Multidemensional Coping Scale were applied to patients group(No.=26) who were diagnosed as cardiovascular disease at Cardiovascular Division Dept. of Internal Medicine, Chung-Ang University Hospital and control group(No.=37) who were screened as normal at Health Screening Center. The data were processed by T test and Chi-square test using SPSS version 7.0.
RESULTS
1) The scores of life event stress of patient group were significantly higher(372.34+/-172.81) than those of normal control group(228.27+/-116.37)(p<0.05). 2) In the aspect of coping strategies, the patients' group was significantly higher than normal control group at the fatalism, accomodation and self-criticism(p<0.05), while in the normal control group, the positive comparison and religious seeking tended to be higher than in the patients group, with no statistical significance. 3) Comparing other risk factors of coronary artery disease, the patients group was higher than the normal control group at the incidence of diabetes, hypo-HDL-cholesterolemia and hypertension(p<0.05). But the incidence of smoking, hypertriglyceridemia and hypercholesterolemia did not differ significantly.
CONCLUSIONS
The life event stress was found to be one of the risk factors of coronary artery disease. The passive-negative coping strategies, such as the fatalism, accomodation and selfcriticism, were also another risk factors.