This article reports a study that addressed coping strategies and possible related factors in 58 patients with aphasia and their relatives in the first year poststroke. Coping strategies, psychosocial changes, expectations of psychosocial adjustment, illness-related causal attributions, control beliefs, and activities of daily living were investigated in a longitudinal study. The data show that subjects with aphasia and their relatives experience significantly more severe professional and social changes than do subjects without aphasia and their families. Aphasia, however, seems to have no substantial effect on coping strategies, expectancies of adjustment, causal and control attributions, or activities of daily living as measured by the Barthel Index.
Keywords: aphasia; coping; disability; follow-up; handicap; outcome; rehabilitation; stroke.