Coping in context. Strategic and tactical coping in carers of stroke survivors and carers of older confused people

This paper seeks to describe and examine the concept of coping in the context of two chronic and debilitating conditions commonly occurring among older age groups, namely strokes and the two main dementias of Alzheimer's Disease and Multi‐infarct Dementia. Using behaviour problems as the focus, carers described the various ways in which they tried to cope. The results suggested that coping could be considered in two main ways. First, there were general orientations or philosophies of coping with caring, not necessarily related to particular behaviour problems—these were described as ‘strategies’ of coping (Active‐involved, Non‐confronting, and Value coping). Second, there were coping responses directed at specific behaviour problems—described as ‘tactical’ coping and considered in the paper at a descriptive level but also in terms of a possible typology. Some implications of this work for clinical interventions are considered and it is suggested that there may be a need to obtain more descriptive data on coping, and relate this to specific outcome indices, before advocating specific coping interventions.