Comparison of pregnancy anxiety based on the type of coping styles

There is a high incidence of distressing psychological symptoms including anxiety in pregnancy. Pregnant mothers should benefit from strategies to deal with pregnancyrelated anxiety and interpersonal and family physical adjustments. The aim of this study was to determine the mediating role of intolerance of ambiguity in the relationship between coping strategies with pregnancy anxiety.

The study method was a causal-comparative research and the statistical population of the present study consisted of pregnant women who were referred to health centers of Social Security Organization of Tehran province in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018 and the sample size was 384 according to the Cramer formula which was selected by multistage sampling. The study tools were Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire (Van den Bergh, 1989) and Coping Styles Questionnaire (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). To analyze the data oneway analysis of variance was used.

In the present study the F scores of the marital relationship (F(1 & 175)=28.84, P≤0.01); fear of giving birth to a child with physical or mental health issues (F(1 & 175)=13.30, P≤0.01); fear of childbirth (F(1 & 175)=37.44, P≤0.01); fear of changes (F(1 & 175)=14.24, P≤0.01) and fear of the changes in personal life (F(1 & 175)=26.10, P≤0.01) were obtained at the significant level of 0.01.

The greater use of the problem-focused coping style in pregnant women, the same amount of concern about unpredictable future situations in these women is reduced and eventually less anxiety is experienced.