Predicting avoidant coping in individuals recently diagnosed with serious illness: a cross-sectional study

The recently diagnosed sample comprised 746 individuals, of whom 13.4% exhibited high avoidant coping. High avoidance was associated with female sex, lower educational level, shorter self-reported life-expectancy, and poorer perceived social support. However, the predictive models demonstrated poor discriminative capacity (AUC 0.62; CI: 0.57-0.68) for the recently diagnosed sample. Among adults aged 50 + years recently diagnosed with serious illness, high avoidance could not be reliably predicted from health parameters and socioeconomics.