Coping and life satisfaction among rural pregnant women: a study from North East India

The purpose of the present study was to assess the different coping styles used by women during pregnancy and their satisfaction of life. Better coping with pregnancy stress and difficulties, ultimately enhances the quality of life. Though various studies are conducted in this sector but very few studies are found in rural India, especially in the North-eastern part of India. The study was conducted by randomly selecting two Primary Health Centres (PHCs) from the Morigoan district of Assam. 190 participants were selected for the study through systematic random sampling. Interview and questionnaire included socio-demographic performa, Brief Cope (Carver, 1997) and The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmnos, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985).  Results show that almost all coping styles were found to be used by pregnant women in this study. It was found that self-blame (Mean=3.05 ±SD=1.385), planning (M=3.01 ± SD=1.41) and behavioural disengagement (M=3.01 ± SD=1.98) were mostly used coping styles among the participants in the study. The next commonly used coping styles were instrumental support (M=2.95 ± SD=1.29), acceptance (M=2.94  ± SD=1.27), religion (M=2.93 ± SD=1.22), positive reframing (M=2.91 ± SD=1.21) and self-distraction (M=2.90 ± SD=1.42). Active coping (M=2.88 ± SD=1.53), denial (M=2.73 ± SD=1.25), substance use (M=2.88 ± SD=1.54), use  of  emotional  support (M=2.88 ± SD=1.32), humour (M=2.79 ± SD=1.16) were found to less used by the participants as compared to other coping styles. Satisfaction of life (M=26.71 ± SD=4.44) was found to be good among most of the rural pregnant women.