Coping with stress and Personality: a study in pregnancies complicated by hypertension.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE\nto investigate the role of personality in pregnancies complicated by hypertension, thru analysis of structure and associations between negative affect and coping strategies, and their role towards psychological distress.\n\n\nMETHOD\na cross-sectional study with 343 women, where 192 pregnancies complicated by hypertension, was carried out by employing the following tools: The Five-Factor Model (Big Five); Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Jalowiec´s Coping Inventory. Two complementary strategies were carried out: an exploratory approach on the interactions between latent variables, as well as a confirmatory technique.\n\n\nRESULTS\nCoping strategies seems to be dissociated in the hypertensive group, and these participants tend to use strategies according to their personality, mostly emotion-focused, extraversion and neuroticism. The extraversion model exclusively shows an acceptable goodness-of-fit after a Structural Equational Modelling. A multigroup analysis reached a full metric invariance level for extraversion.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThese results are of interest for both and applied levels, as reducing perinatal negative affective states in associated pregnancy complications is of importance for prenatal screening and appropriate interventions.