COPING WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS AS PREDICTOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ADAPTATION

The purpose of the study was to comprehensively consider one of the key problems of modern clinical psychology – adaptation of an individual in a chronic disease. The relevance of this problem is determined by the development of effective methods of diagnosis and therapy, allowing us to talk not about fatal diseases, but about chronic conditions that require constant attention and treatment (such as cystic fibrosis). An attempt was made to define the role of coping strategies chosen bythe patientwith the disease in the process of adaptation to chronic somatic diseases. A study of coping behavior, treatment adherence, and quality of life was conducted in adult patients with cystic fibrosis (n=80). The study showed that patients with cystic fibrosis have several styles of coping behavior («Optimistic coping» and «Confrontational avoidance»), the dominance of one of which determines indicators of adaptation to the disease – adherence to treatment and quality of life. Thus, coping behavior, as an instrument of personality self-regulation, can be considered as a key parameter and target for interventions in the psychological accompaniment of the patient's adaptation process to a chronic somatic disease. At the same time, it is important to define a patient's highly effective coping-repertoire not as the dominance of one, at first glance, adaptive strategy for a disease, but as a wide range of strategies that increase response variability and take into account the presence of emotions, as a natural and controlled component of a disease's experience.