Coping Strategies of Primary Family Caregivers of the People with Spinal Cord Injury : A Cross-Sectional Study.

Abstract

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) affects many aspects of human functioning causing the person to require care from family members. Caregiving for such chronic conditions has its good and bad effects. Evidence suggests identifying the way that caregivers cope, the effects of it can be assessed. Coping is a person’s cognitive and behavioral efforts in response to stressors that direct how those stressors will affect physical and emotional well-being. With the increasing need of caregiving worldwide the way caregivers cope should be studied in a nation like ours that hasn’t yet developed long-term care policies and provisions for care. Aim: To investigate the coping strategies used by the primary family caregiver of people with SCI in both Rehabilitation center and in the Community. Methods: The study is done following quantitative cross-sectional design. Data was collected from 134 participants by face-to-face survey using the F-COPES (Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales). Descriptive analysis was done using SPSS v.20. The mean and SD of each subscale score and total score of the F-COPES were calculated to determine and compare the coping strategies that were used by family primary caregivers of a person with SCI among the two groups: rehabilitation center and community. Further Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis test was done to find out the association between the total F-COPES score of the two groups and also the association between coping and socio-demographic factors. Result: Findings showed in two areas, rehabilitation center and community the female participants were 73.1% and 76.1% and male participants were 26.9% and 23.9%. The Abstract xiii mean of overall scale revealed participants used coping on a moderate level and mean of the subscales revealed in both areas, reframing was most used coping strategy. Rehabilitation center participants varied from community by using family support in fourth and passive appraisal was the least used whereas in community family support was the least used. Except for the coping strategy mobilizing family support (p= 0.000), no statistically significant differences were found between F-COPES total and subscales between rehabilitation center and community. In terms of association between coping and socio-demographic factor only in gender there's a significant difference in mean ranks of rehabilitation center but not in community. However, there were no significant differences in mean ranks of other factors (e.g. age, duration of caregiving, level of education etc.) among both groups. Meaning that coping did not differ according to other factors but may differ due to gender of the caregivers. Conclusion: This study finds and compares the coping strategies that are used among the family primary caregivers of person with SCI in a rehabilitation center and community. The study contributes to the field of rehabilitation science by guiding therapists or rehabilitation service provider in Bangladesh on how to incorporate families into culturally appropriate and competent interventions. Keywords: Coping, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), Family caregiver, Rehabilitation.