Coping Strategies in Patients with Beta-thalassemia and their Parents: A Systematic Review

Background: Thalassemia is one of the most common genetic disorders. Patients with thalassemia and their families face various challenges in their daily lives, which affect their coping strategies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the coping strategies in patients with beta-thalassemia and their parents. Methods: The present systematic review examines the coping strategies applied by the thalassemic patients and their caregivers. We carried out electronic searches using Medline (via PubMed), Web of science, and Scopus to select the related studies without date restriction until Nov, 10, 2021; and completed the findings by hand search. The Mesh-based search terms were Beta thalassemia, Mediterranean anemia, Cooley anemia, coping, and adaptation. Results: The electronic search process identified 311 papers as candidates for the systematic review. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 9 articles remained for analysis. The review of the 9 articles showed that the patients with beta-thalassemia use emotion-focused coping strategies in the form of distraction and avoidance coping strategies to deal with their problems. Also, religious coping is the most coping strategy which is used by the parents. Furthermore, there is a positive relation between adaptive coping strategies and quality of life and resilience. Conclusions: According to the results, patients with beta-thalassemia use maladaptive coping skills (emotion-focused coping strategies). Also the evaluated studies demonstrated that using the adaptive coping strategies improved the quality of life, resilience and psychological health of patients with thalassemia and their caregivers.