Ways of coping to deal with stress used by the Iraqi repatriated prisoners of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988

Abstract EN

Objective : To find out the ways of coping to deal with stress used by the Iraqi repatriated prisoners of Iran-Iraq war, and also to find out the relationship between these ways and some demographic characteristics.

Methodology : A descriptive study was carried out from Oct.

18th, 2010 through Jan.

10th, 2011.

A Snowball sampling as a non-probability sampling technique was used to recruit 92 repatriates who had visited Ministry of Human Rights.

An instrument was constructed for the purpose.

The constructed instrument consisted of six demographic characteristics, and twenty eight items for measuring the level coping in POWs.

Data were collected with using the constructed instrument and the process of the interview as means for data collection.

Data were analyzed through the application of descriptive statistical analysis, which are; percentages, frequencies and inferential statistic analysis (Pearson correlation coefficient).

Results : The study revealed that the majority of IRPOWs have some levels of coping that 31.5 % (n = 29) of IRPOWs have weak level of coping ; 64.1 % (n = 59) have medium level of coping ; and only 4.3 % (n = 4) have good level of coping.

The findings also indicated that there is no significant relationship between coping relative to ; current age, age at capture, duration of captivity, marital status, and level of education.

Conclusions : The present study concluded that all the IPOWS were males and married, the majority were stayed in captivity sixteen years and more, high percentage of them had Bachelor degree.

The study indicated that the majority of IPOWS used the religious commitment and mediation as a mean of coping to deal with stress.

Recommendations : The study recommends that it is very important to establish special mental health services centres within the primary health care centres deal with those repatriates for counselling and in order to diagnose and treat them and further studies in this field with follow-up studies for the repatriates.