| This study examined the coping strategies of acceptance, religious coping, social support, and experiential avoidance among a group of 88 Tibetan survivors of torture and refugee trauma (55 males, 33 females) who were patients at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture in NYC. The major hypothesis tested in the study was that higher levels of adaptive coping (acceptance, religious, and social support) would be related to lower distress (somatization, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and overall distress), while higher levels of experiential avoidance (EA; the process of trying to modify aversive internal experiences including emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations) would be related to higher distress, controlling for torture severity (TS). Gender and legal status were examined as moderators of the relationship between coping and distress, and coping and mental health service use were explored as moderators of the relationship between TS and distress. Measures included the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, an adapted Religious Coping scale, the Brief Symptom Inventory-18, and the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire.;Hierarchical regressions and ANOVAs indicated no differences in the frequency of coping strategy use, no differences in coping use by gender, nor was TS related to coping. Generally, more adaptive coping strategies predicted less distress and higher EA predicted more distress, controlling for TS. Acceptance moderated the effects of TS on depression, overall distress, and PTSD, so that these symptoms were higher when acceptance was lower. Among asylum-seekers, higher EA predicted higher anxiety. Furthermore, legal status predicted anxiety over and above TS. Gender was found to moderate some of these relationships, such that the use of acceptance was found to be especially beneficial for women's outcomes (anxiety, depression, and overall distress) and religious coping was especially beneficial for men's outcomes (PTSD), controlling for TS and legal status.;Overall, these findings show that acceptance, religious coping, and perceived social support are adaptive coping strategies for Tibetan survivors of trauma, regardless of TS. The study highlights the benefits of acceptance for women, of religious coping for men, and the detrimental effects of experiential avoidance among asylum-seekers. |
