Abstract
How can the process and determinants of coping with acute health crises be described? What are the major adaptive tasks seriously ill patients encounter and what types of coping skills do they use? How does the patient adapt to the existential crisis created by learning that he or she has a life-threatening illness? What stressors are encountered by health care professionals and how can they facilitate effective coping and adaptation by patients and their families? I deal with these questions here by presenting a conceptual framework of physical illness as a life crisis and describing how patients and staff cope with the stress of illness and of treatment.
Preparation of this chapter was supported by NIMH Grant 28177 and Veterans Administration Health Services Research and Development Funds.
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© 1982 Plenum Press, New York
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Moos, R.H. (1982). Coping with Acute Health Crises. In: Millon, T., Green, C.J., Meagher, R.B. (eds) Handbook of Clinical Health Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3412-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3412-5_7
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