Resilience in persons with paraplegia: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Resilience is regarded as a crucial coping capacity for persons dealing with trauma and loss, such as spinal cord injury. It has been reported that resilience has moderate to strong relationships with a variety of psychosocial traits, including coping mechanisms, spiritual belief, and life satisfaction, in addition to mental health. Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) can have psychological effects that worsen the quality of life. It is becoming increasingly clear that developing resilience may be linked to better health outcomes. A spinal cord injury is frequently an abrupt and life-altering occurrence that requires significant and prolonged rehabilitation. The ability to bounce back from a spinal cord injury and adjust to their impairment after returning to the community depends on their ability to build resilience. Aim: The study aims to explore the understanding of how resiliency helps persons with paraplegia to adjust to their disability. Methods: A phenomenological qualitative study design was used. Nine paraplegic SCI patients—seven men and two women—participated; they had all completed rehabilitation and were returning to their community. Individuals took part in a face-toface, semi-structured interview conducted by the study's investigators adopting a selfdeveloped interview guide. Thematic analysis is chosen for data analysis. Thematic analysis is utilized to focus on how survivors of spinal cord injury experience and build resilience. Results: Eight themes in the responses of participants describing what they felt contributed to their resilience in adjusting to SCI emerged through a thematic analysis of the data. The eight themes were: From denial to determination, health issues and their influence on life, barrier, support system, adaptation, participation, spirituality or faith, and inspired by others. Conclusion: Individuals with SCI recognized a positive attitude, perseverance and determination to move forward, and social support from friends and family as major contributors to their ability to adapt in the face of traumatic circumstances that resulted in SCI, which was consistent with previous research findings. Resilience is a crucial component in the long-term treatment of SCI that can be improved by focusing rehabilitative therapies on mood management as well as self-efficacy beliefs. Largerscale research can help in a better understanding of these findings. Keywords: resilience, spinal cord injury, tetraplegia, paraplegia, rehabilitation.