THE INTERACTION OF PHYSICAL ILLNESS, COPING FOCUS, AND PERCEIVED SOCIAL SUPPORT AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO RECOVERY FROM STROKE.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Recovery from stroke is defined as the process of returning to the level of physical and psychosocial functioning present before the stroke. The major purpose of this study was to compare the explanatory power of a model addressing the interplay of physical illness, coping focus, perceived social support, and recovery with the more traditional unidimensional model based on physical predictors alone. A selected sample of 22 previously able-bodied subjects with unilateral, ischemic stroke were interviewed twice: during the acute post-stroke phase and again after three months. Thirty-nine percent of the variance in recovery was explained by the multidimensional model (p < .05), compared to 13 percent explained variance using physical factors alone. Higher proportions of problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies, rather than either focus alone, were associated with improved recovery. Subjects reported more physical issues as most stressful during the immediate post-stroke period, and more psychosocial issues after three months. Coping focus was related to type of stressor at Time 1; psychosocial stressors were associated with problem-focused coping (p < .01), and physical stressors were related to emotion-focused coping (p < .01). Subjects reported relatively small support networks, but there was no significant decrease in number of supporters or total perceived social support from Time 1 to Time 2. The results of this study indicate that future research on stroke recovery should include the roles of coping and social support as well as physiological lesion effects, and should address the need for more descriptive data on coping and social support among stroke survivors and families. Nursing implications are discussed in terms of adjustive demands during the acute post-stroke period as well as for the post-hospitalization transition to resuming self-care and psychosocial functioning.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-05, Section: B, page: 1929.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1985.

School code: 0034.