Coping strategies for stress in medical students with type D personality

Abstract

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Aim. To study the choice of coping strategies and coping adequacy in medical students with type D personality. Material and methods. The study included 98 participants - 68 women and 30 men, studying at the General Medicine Faculty (Kemerovo State Medical University), aged 18 to 23 years (mean age 19.1 ± 2.0 years). All participants completed psychological questionnaires to identify predisposition to psychological distress and choice of coping strategies. Results. All subjects (n = 98) were divided into two groups: subjects with type D personality (n = 44) and subjects without type D personality (n = 54). Type D personality in men was detected in 20.4%, in women in 79.6% (p = 0.03). In students with type D, the average scores on the negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI) scales were higher (16.0 and 13.5 points) than in students without type D (6.5 and 9.0 points), (p < 0.001 in both cases). Subjects with type D had higher scores on the "Escape-avoidance" (p < 0.001), "Accepting responsibility" (p = 0.009) and "Distancing" (p = 0.05) scales of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WSQ) and "Avoidance" (p = 0.007) scale of the Central Sensitisation Inventory (CSI) questionnaire. The indicator of coping strategies showed a very low level of use of avoidance strategies: with type D - 9.09%, without type D - 31.48% (p = 0.007). Students with type D had a pronounced preference for the "Escape-avoidance" strategy of 75.0% (p = 0.000018). According to univariate logistic regression analysis, an increase of 1 point in the values on the "Escape-avoidance" scale increased the chance of identifying type D by 1.15 times (95% CI 1.07-1.23; p < 0.001). On the contrary, an increase in the score on the "Positive Reappraisal" scale reduced the probability of identifying type D personality (OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.86-0.98; p = 0.005). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the identified association between the "Escape-avoidance" strategy and type D personality has high values (AUC = 0.779; 95% CI 0.688-0.870). Conclusion. Predominance of inadequate of coping strategies, such as "Escape-avoidance" and "Avoidance", was found in healthy medical students with type D personality. According to logistic regression analysis, the independent strategy associated with type D personality is the "Escape-avoidance" and without type D - "Positive Reappraisal".