Social role valorization, social network transactions and life satisfaction for people with psychiatric disabilities.
Creators: name: Virley O'Connor, Barbara
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2001
Subjects: subject: Psychology, Clinical.

description: The goal of the current study was to test a model of the relationship between Social Role Valorization (SRV) theory, social network characteristics and transactions, subjective ratings of satisfaction with living situation, and overall life conditions of adults with psychiatric disabilities. In particular, the objectives were threefold: (a) to further empirical testing of SRV theory within the domain of mental health; (b) to further research on the social networks and transactions of individuals with psychiatric disabilities; and (c) to advance research on the contribution of environmental and transactional characteristics to the life satisfaction ratings of individuals with psychiatric disabilities. Although results of the path analysis did not demonstrate a mediational model between the environmental, transactional and psychological variables, findings did show that receiving more types of positive social support was related to higher levels of life satisfaction. Conversely, the amount of negative social interaction received was inversely related to both life satisfaction and satisfaction with support received from family members. From a clinical perspective, these findings underscore the importance of considering positive and negative support transactions in designing and implementing social support interventions. Exploratory and descriptive results using the SRV measure mirrored previous research which found that services tend to be more successful at integrating clients physically than socially into the community. In addition, the present findings suggest that overall service quality for clients of the Mental Health Community Support Service is modest at best. The present findings have also extended research on the social support networks and processes of individuals with severe and chronic mental illness who live in the community. In particular, estimates of the size of social networks are in keeping with past observations and demonstrate that networks for this population comprise a mix of people including family, friends, living companions and professionals. The observed correlations between overall network size and the various measures of satisfaction, and between the size of various network segments and satisfaction measures, underscore the importance that different individuals may have in providing support. The potential importance of network size to client outcomes was further highlighted by the post-hoc analyses, which showed a positive relationship between overall network size and satisfaction with support received from non-family members and between size of family network and satisfaction with support received from family members, even after the effects of client functioning and gender had been removed. Finally, the results also highlight the importance of gender differences in social support processes in that women in the sample had larger networks and reported receiving more positive social support. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)