A coping may consist of stone, brick, tile, slate, metal, wood or thatch. In all cases it should be weathered to throw off the wet.
In Romanesque work copings appeared plain and flat, and projected over the wall with a throating to form a drip. In later work a steep slope was given to the weathering (mainly on the outer side), and began at the top with an astragal; in the Decorated style there were two or three sets off; and in the later Perpendicular period these assumed a wavy section, and the coping mouldings continued round the sides, as well as at top and bottom, mitreing at the angles, as in many of the colleges at Oxford.
The cheapest type of coping caps the ordinary 9-inch brick wall, and consists of brick on edge above a double tile creasing, all in cement; the creasing consisting of one or two rows of tiles laid horizontally on the wall and projecting on each side about 2 inches to throw off the water
(Original text from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica)
In psychology, coping refers to the things that someone does which enable them to handle a stressfulful event.
In coping with disease, people tend to use one of two main coping strategies: either problem focused or emotion focused coping.
People using problem focused strategies try to deal with the cause of their problem. They do this by finding out information on the disease, learning new skills to manage their disease and rearranging their lives around the disease.
Emotion focused strategies occur when the person modifies the way they think, for example: employing denial, or distancing oneself from the problem. People may alter the way they think about a problem by altering their goals and values.
People may use a mixture of these different types of coping, and coping mechanisms will usually change over time. All these methods can prove useful, but some claim that those using problem focused coping strategies will adjust better to life.