Religious/spiritual coping in institutionalized elderly

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the spiritual/religious coping (SRC) of elderly of two institutions of long-stay for elderly, from two towns Pouso Alegre and Santa Rita in south of Minas Gerais state Brazil and to correlate the SRC with personal characteristics. METHODS: The work is based on epidemiological and analytical cross-sectional design method with nonprobability sampling and sample of 77 elderly. The instruments used are characterization staff which consists of 15 multiple choice questions, scale of two dimensions SRC, SRC positive and SRC negative. RESULTS: both groups were balanced between the sexes, by the average age of 76 years old, 81.6 % did not complete primary education and 96.1 % practiced a religion. There was a high use of the SRC total average use and showed higher scores with age and time of residence and SRC Total. CONCLUSION: final analyses of the data demonstrated that the elderly uneducated and with religion presented SRC strategies so high and positive