• Ingris Peláez-Ballestas, Annelis Boonen, Janitzia Vázquez-Mellado, Isabel Reyes-Lagunes, Adolfo Hernández-Garduño, Maria Victoria Goycochea, Ana G Bernard-Medina, Jacqueline Rodríguez-Amado, Julio Casasola-Vargas, Mario A Garza-Elizondo, Francisco J Aceves, Clara Shumski, Ruben Burgos-Vargas, and REUMAIMPACT group.
• From the Department of Rheumatology (IP-B, JV-M, JC-V, RB-V), Hospital General de México "Eduardo Liceaga," Mexico City, Mexico; Maastricht University Medical Center (AB), The Netherlands; Postgraduate Department of Psychology (I-RL), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City; Department of Pediatrics (A-HG), Hospital Universitario "José Eleuterio Gonzalez", Monterrey, Nuevo Leon; Clinical Epidemiology Unit (MVG), Hospital Gabriel Mancera Regional 1, IMSS, Mexico City; Department of Rheumatology (AGB-M), Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco; Department of Rheumatology (JR-A, MAG-E), Hospital Universitario "José Eleuterio Gonzalez," Monterrey, Nuevo Leon; Hospital General de zona 46 (FJA), IMSS and Unidad de Investigación Crônico-Degenerativas, Guadalajara, Jalisco; and Department of Rheumatology (CS), Hospital Central, PEMEX, Mexico City, Mexico.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2015 Mar 1; 94 (10): e600e600.

AbstractThis article aims to identify the strategies for coping with health and daily-life stressors of Mexican patients with chronic rheumatic disease. We analyzed the baseline data of a cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), and gout. Their strategies for coping were identified with a validated questionnaire. Comparisons between health and daily-life stressors and between the 3 clinical conditions were made. With regression analyses, we determined the contribution of individual, socioeconomic, educational, and health-related quality-of-life variables to health status and coping strategy. We identified several predominant coping strategies in response to daily-life and health stressors in 261 patients with RA, 226 with AS, and 206 with gout. Evasive and reappraisal strategies were predominant when patients cope with health stressors; emotional/negative and evasive strategies predominated when coping with daily-life stressors. There was a significant association between the evasive pattern and the low short-form health survey (SF-36) scores and health stressors across the 3 diseases. Besides some differences between diagnoses, the most important finding was the predominance of the evasive strategy and its association with low SF-36 score and high level of pain in patients with gout. Patients with rheumatic diseases cope in different ways when confronted with health and daily-life stressors. The strategy of coping differs across diagnoses; emotional/negative and evasive strategies are associated with poor health-related quality of life. The identification of the coping strategies could result in the design of psychosocial interventions to improve self-management.

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