Stress Level, Coping Strategies and Quality of Life among Women Suffering from Chronic Diseases in Selected Hospitals of Pune City

Abstract

Stress and Coping are interconnected; quality of life depends on goals, perception, expectations, standards and concerns of living life. This quantitative descriptive survey study was undertaken to assess the stress level, coping strategies and quality of life on 400 women aged between 30-60 years who completed 2-6 years of disease duration with chronic diseases like chronic renal disease, breast cancer and osteoarthritis at selected hospitals of Pune city. Duration of data collection was 2 May 2015 to 19 March 2016. The assessment of the stress level, coping strategies and quality of life were done from the chronic disease patients by self reporting and semi structured interview and indepth information collected with the data collection tool. Results showed that 57.8 percent of the subjects had severe stress, 39.8 percent of them had moderate stress and 2.5 percent subjects had mild stress levels. Majority of subjects i.e. 46.8 percent of them had very poor use of coping strategies, 45.8 percent of them had poor use of coping strategies and 7.5 percent of them used good coping strategies. This study highlighted quality of life of subjects, i.e. 70.3 percent of the subjects had average quality of life, 28.5 percent of them had poor quality life and 1.3 percent of them had good quality of life. This study shows that there is increase in the stress, very poor use of coping strategies and average quality of life among women suffering from chronic diseases. To conclude, the assessment of the stress level will help to know current psychology and the stress level and how to cope with chronic diseases to reduce stress level of women and will help to improve quality of life as well as control and prevent complications.