Anxiety and Coping in the Healthcare System

Hospitals or doctor’s appointments are environments that cause anxiety for a lot of people. Medical procedures can therefore be stressful for patients, thus potentially affecting wound healing and adjustment during recovery. Hence, the assessment of how individuals cope with stressful medical procedures is important. Focusing on vigilant and cognitive avoidant coping strategies, we investigate the emotional and biological reaction to anxiety in diverse medical settings with various groups of patients. 

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ABI-MS: Coping with Medical Procedures - Development of an Inventory

Medical treatment can be stressful for patients, thus potentially affecting wound healing and adjustment during recovery. Hence, the assessment of how individuals cope with stressful medical procedures is important. Cooperating with Prof. Andreas Schwerdtfeger, Prof. …

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VARD: Repressive Coping and the Verbal Autonomic Response Dissociation in a Simulated Medical Stress Situation

Looking at the number of surgeries performed each year in Germany, it seems that coping with medical procedures is becoming a more important research field in health psychology.  Unfortunately the scope of efficient coping strategies within the medical setting is limited. Hence, the use of repressive coping strategies seems to be quite frequent. Connected to repressive coping, research groups described the phenomena of the verbal autonomic response dissociation (shortly known as VARD). In…

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