Chronische Erkrankungen und religiöse Copingstrategien

Chronic diseases make because of their perdurability special demands on the individual forms of coping. The recourse to religiousness can give orientation and constitutes a personal resource in the context of the coping process. The present study examines the relation between different strategies of religious coping and depressive disorders of patients with chronic diseases. In this study data of 117 patients, at the age between 17 and 87 (M = 57.01) years, with different chronic illnesses (e.g. diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, multiple sclerosis) were collected by using a self‐assessment questionnaire. An adapted german version of the RCOPE (Pargament et al., 2000) by Lehr et al. (2007) and the depression scale of the german version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Herrmann & Buss, 1994) were used as instruments. The statistical evaluation was done with exploratory factor analysis, bivariate correlation analyses as well as multiple regression analyses. The results show that there is a relation between the use of religious coping strategies and depressive disorders in the collective of patients with chronic diseases. In case of negative religious coping methods (religious discontent, r = .25; punishing god, r = .34) a statistically significant correlation to depression was shown. The results of the present study indicate that the integration of religious coping methods in the medical care and counseling could lead to a better understanding of patients with chronic diseases and their individual forms of coping.