Personality Traits, Coping Strategies and Social Support in patients with Depression and Anxiety

Present study was aimed to investigate the relationship of personality traits, coping strategies and social support in patients with depression and anxiety disorders. It was hypothesized that (a) there would likely to be a significant relationship between Personality Traits, Coping Strategies and Social Support in patients with depressive illness and anxiety disorders, (b) personality traits would likely to predict coping strategies in patients with depressive illness and anxiety disorders and (c) there would likely to be a gender difference with respect to personality traits, coping strategies and social support in patients with depressive illness and anxiety disorder. The total sample of 140 including 100 with depressive illness (men = 29 and women = 71) and 40 with anxiety disorder (men = 16 and women = 24) were recruited through purposive sampling technique. Self-designed demographic questionnaire, Depression, Anxiety and Obsessive compulsive Scale of Symptom Checklist-Revised (Rahman & Dawood, 2002) were used for screening. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Amjad & Kausar, 2001), Coping Strategies Questionnaire (Kausar & Munir, 2004) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) were administered respectively. Results revealed significant inverse relationship of personality traits with active practical coping strategies and active distractive coping strategies and social support in patients with depressive illness and anxiety disorders. Likewise, extraversion was the significant predictor of active distractive coping strategy in patients with depressive illness whereas neuroticism was found to be the significant predictor of active distractive coping strategy in patients with anxiety disorders.