Aging and life adjustment after spinal cord injury

Abstract

Study Design: A ®eld study of aging after spinal cord injury (SCI) was conducted by surveying the life adjustment of a large sample of participants with SCI. Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to compare life adjustment scores between cohorts of participants based on chronologic age, age at injury onset, time since injury and percentage of life with SCI. Summary of Background Data: Existing cross-sectional research suggests that age is negatively correlated and time since injury is positively correlated with life adjustment. However, few studies had investigated aging among people who have lived 30 or more years with SCI. Methods: A total of 435 participants, 55 of whom were injured for 30 or more years, completed the Life Situation Questionnaire-Revised (LSQ-R), a measure of multiple SCI outcomes. Results: Results indicated that being injured later in life is associated with a lower overall level of subjective well-being, poorer health, and a less active lifestyle. However, subjective well-being appears to improve throughout the life-cycle, even beyond 30 years postinjury, thus neutralizing the adverse impact of age at onset on subjective well-being, but not on health or activities. Conclusions:The results suggest that rehabilitation professionals need to pay special attention to problems presented by being injured after the age of 40, particularly as it relates to activities. Living 30 or more years with SCI does not appear to present overwhelming barriers to adjustment.

Individualised and health-related quality of life of persons with spinal cord injury

“…24 Possibly, such difficulties could be counterbalanced by processes of adjustment strengthened by age and experience, as confirmed by the improvement of QoL or by the decrease of depressive symptoms over time, which are well documented in SCI studies. 13,14 If we consider time since injury, our data supports the hypothesis that a longer duration of SCI is significantly associated with a higher prevalence of task-oriented coping strategies, confirming the increasing relevance of such adaptive strategies over time. Further research, and especially longitudinal studies, should be conducted in line to increase our knowledge of these important aspects.…”

“…This process, especially for people with SCI, helps them to face the constraints of the physical condition without forgoing an active role in their families and in society. 13 The role of coping strategies can also be seen from this developmental point of view. Our finding that emotion-oriented coping negatively correlated with various dimensions of QoL confirms the assumption that these kinds of strategies, despite being normative and to some extent helpful in the acute phase of SCI, can be dysfunctional in the long run.…”

“…Age and especially time since injury have often been found to be positively related to psychological adjustment, 13 whereas the role of gender has received less attention and the available data suggest a weak impact of such a variable on life satisfaction. 14 Given all these premises, the aims of the present study are to examine the relationships among functional status and different measures of QoL in a population of subjects with SCI, and to consider the role of coping style, age, time since injury and gender.…”

SCI Longitudinal Aging Study: 40 Years of Research

“…42 The impact of aging on SWB suggests that persons who were older at injury onset and chronologically older had lower levels of SWB and lower self-reported adjustment. 35,43 White participants reported higher SWB across several indices, and males had lower scores than women on satisfaction interpersonal relations. 44 The trajectory of employment satisfaction contradicts somewhat the patterns seen in other life satisfaction areas.…”

Ageing with spinal cord injury: cross-sectional and longitudinal effects

“…Adjustment after SCI has been shown to have di erent e ects associated with age and time since injury. 14,18,19 Pain and fatigue have been associated with age; economic stability and number of symptoms reported were associated with time since injury; and economic stability and perceived health were associated with an interaction between age and time since injury. 10 A general study of health status and SCI showed that outcomes were more associated with age than with time since injury.…”