Relationship between Coping with Interpersonal Stressors and Depressive Symptoms in the United States, Australia, and China: A Focus on Reassessing Coping

OBJECTIVE: Reassessing coping involves efforts to wait patiently for an appropriate opportunity to act or for a change or improvement in the situation, and can be observed in individuals encountering a stressful relationship event. It was hypothesized that reassessing coping would be negatively associated with depressive symptoms. METHODS: A cross-sectional Web-based survey was conducted in order to test this hypothesis by examining relationships between coping strategies including reassessing coping, distancing coping and constructive coping for stressful relationship events and depressive symptoms. Participants were 1,500 individuals recruited from the general populations of the United States, Australia, and China. RESULTS: Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that scores on coping strategies predicted depressive symptom scores in the samples from all three countries with medium or large effect sizes. Further, the beta values for reassessing coping scores were negative and significant in all samples, indicating that the hypothesis was supported for each of the population samples surveyed. In addition, distancing coping, which reflects strategies that attempt to actively damage, disrupt, and dissolve a stressful relationship, was associated with high levels of depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Reassessing coping for interpersonal stressors was be negatively associated with depressive symptoms in sample from general populations of the United States, Australia, and China.