Coping During Pregnancy Following Exposure to a Natural Disaster: The QF2011 Queensland Flood Study.

This study investigated how coping strategies moderated the impact of disaster-related objective hardship on subjective distress in pregnant women. The objective hardship (exposure severity), subjective distress (Peritraumatic Distress Inventory, Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire and Impact of Event Scale-Revised) and coping styles (Brief COPE) of pregnant women (N = 226) exposed to the 2011 Queensland, Australia flood were assessed. Moderation analyses were used to assess how coping strategies moderated the relationship between objective hardship and subjective distress levels. We found that the more severe the objective flood exposure, the greater the women's subjective distress. The moderation analyses were significant for the Brief COPE's three coping styles (i.e., problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and dysfunctional coping). For women experiencing high levels of objective hardship, problem-focused (∆R Sample was generally high SES and no measure of social support was available. Results suggest that both problem-focused and dysfunctional coping strategies were maladaptive for women with relatively high exposure levels. Overall, emotion-focused coping strategies were more likely than problem-focused or dysfunctional strategies to reduce pregnant women's subjective distress following the flood.

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