Abstract

This study aims to find the relationship between quality of life and coping strategies in coronary heart disease patients. Two hundred coronary heart disease patients at Tehran Heart Center, who had been diagnosed with the disease 3 months before were selected and filled out The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) and Quality of Life-SF36. Results showed a discrepancy between quality of life indices and coping strategies. Task-oriented strategy had a positive and significant relationship with total quality of life and PF indices while it had a negative and significant relationship with MH, RE and RP indices. Emotional-oriented strategy had a positive and significant relationship with RP and RE indices while it had a negative and significant relationship with PF, GH, PH, total psychological health and total quality of life indices. Avoidance-oriented strategy had a negative and significant relationship only with MH index. Furthermore, quality of life aspects (physical and psychological) had a positive and significant relationship with emotional-oriented strategy, but it did not have a significant relationship with task-oriented and avoidance-oriented strategies. Also, the social aspect of quality of life did not have a significant relationship with any of the strategies. Considering the effect of stress on decreasing the quality of life, we recommend a psychologist train coping strategies to coronary heart disease patients along with medical treatments in order to improve recovery, maintain health and reduce recurrence. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information.