Coping patterns associated with long-term outcome from traumatic brain injury among female survivors

In this study, we investigated the relationship between coping strategy and long-term outcome from traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a sample of 72 female TBI patients an average of five years post-injury. Using cluster analytic techniques based on two subscale sets from the Ways of Coping Questionnaire-Revised (WOC-R), we derived clinically relevant cluster groups based on coping strategy and validated the groups on demographic, injury-related, and quality of life measures. Results suggested that coping strategies characterized by low overall coping and positive reappraisal were associated with relatively good outcome, while those characterized by high overall coping and a combination of self-blame and escape avoidance were associated with relatively poorer outcome. These results are similar to those obtained with male samples, but societally linked gender stereotypes may contribute to unique coping and restriction of coping strategy for female TBI patients.