Stress and Coping in Patients with Clinical Manifestations of Human Papillomavirus

Stressful life events in response to a psychosocial trigger have been reported to negatively affect the course of infections. This study was based on patients with clinical manifestations of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and a control group of patients with psoriasis who were admitted over a period of one year to the Dermatology Department of Karlovac General Hospital. A total of 122 patients participated in the study, either with a confirmed diagnosis of clinical manifestations of HPV infection (n=66) or in a psoriasis control group (n=56). The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies are used in patients with clinical manifestations of HPV infection. We used the Recent Life Changes Questionnaire and Brief COPE test for stress evaluation. There were no statically significant differences between adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies comparing patients with HPV and a control group. The difference in specific coping strategies between HPV and control groups showed that self-blame and planning strategies were statistically significantly more common in the HPV group. Patients with HPV with genital warts used maladaptive coping statistically significantly more than patients with non-genital localization of HPV. Patients with HPV who had a higher score of life stress events used maladaptive coping statistically significantly more than patients with a lower life stress events score. The results point to the need for patients with HPV with genital localization and high numbers of stress events to learn how to cope with stress, enabling them to take action and change their ways of coping. There is also a need to integrate psychological intervention into standard care protocols of dermatologic diseases.