T N Davidson | PubMed Health

PubMed1981

Social support and post-burn adjustment.

Interviews were conducted with 314 persons who had sustained burns and were treated at a major burn center between 1956 and 1976. The interviews covered standard socioeconomic data and post-burn life patterns including the number of weeks lost to employment or education. The data indicate that social support is both directly and indirectly related to patients' post-burn adjustment. Measures of social support from family, friends, and peers were significantly related to several subjectively assessed outcomes, such as life satisfaction, self-esteem and participation in social and recreational activities. There was also evidence that social support moderates the rehabilitation process independent of the severity of the burn injury. The findings tend to challenge the commonly held belief that psychosocial rehabilitation needs are monotonically related to the severity of the injury.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Self-esteem of severely burned patients.

As a part of a retrospective rehabilitation study conducted in 1977, 320 persons treated at a major burn center between 1956 and 1976 were interviewed by professional survey research interviewers using a specially developed 519-item questionnaire that included standard socioeconomic data along with information about the person's life pattern subsequent to the burn. In addition, several complex dimensions of personality were measured through multiple indicators rather than by single items. According to the midpoint of the scale of Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory, 85% of the respondents had adequate to high self-esteem. Although the size of the burn and part of the body burned did not seem to significantly affect self-esteem, age when burned and time since burn did. Disfigured females had significantly lower self-esteem than disfigured males. Social support, life satisfaction, involvement in social and recreational activities and employment were found to influence the group as a whole. Respondents with low self-esteem spent twice as many days in bed and missed considerably more days of work in the year prior to the study than did those with moderate or high self-esteem. The findings in this study indicate with some certainty that the majority of burned people make a successful adjustment following even large and disfiguring injuries and that successful rehabilitation is long-term and episodic in nature.

Adult↗