Coping Strategies in Suicide Attempters

Introduction: The coping strategies serve as an internal source of emotional strength and facilitate a person’s response to any internal or external stress. Although positive or negative stress is a part of everybody’s life, it has been shown that suicide attempters have experienced more instability in their lives but they poorly use coping strategies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the coping strategies in patients with self-immolation.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the burn department of Imam Reza hospital from March 2017 to October 2018. The standardized Julio s coping strategies questionnaire was filled for patients with self-immolation who consented to participate. This questionnaire has 60 questions which cover eight domains about coping mechanisms. Each question could be answered through a 0-3 scale. Data were analyzed by SPSS 25.Results: Overall 30 patients were admitted with self-immolation in this time period out of whom 23 were clinically stable to participate in the study. The majority of participants were female (74%, 17 individuals). Overall, the most prevalent used coping mechanism was emotive (2.54±0.57) followed by fatalistic (2.48±0.56). Men (3.06±0.58) used emotive mechanism more frequently than women (2.36±0.46) (p=0.007). No significant difference was found between the two genders for other mechanisms. Burnt percentage of total body surface area was negatively and significantly correlated with optimistic coping strategy (r=-0.46, p=0.02).Conclusion: Educational programs which target emotional control and increases the level of hope for individuals or even society, seems to be helpful in preventing suicide by self-immolation.