Association between self-esteem, depression, social support, and quality of life among patients with cerebrovascular accidents and spinal cord injury

Abstract

Study aim: The study determined the association between self-esteem, depression, social support and quality of life among patients with cerebrovascular accident (stroke) and spinal cord injury. Material and methods: The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design. A total of 60 participants (30 stroke patients and 30 spinal cord injured patients) participated in this study. The selected psychosocial variables such as Depression and Self Esteem were assessed using Beck Depression Inventory Questionnaire (BDI) and Self Esteem Questionnaire (SE) respectively. Also, social support and quality of life were assessed using Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ6) and Short Form (SF-36) Health Questionnaire respectively. The association between social support, depression, self-esteem and quality of life in both spinal cord injury and stroke patients and the demographic variables were analyzed using Spearman rho. However, independent sample t-test was used to analyze the difference between social support, depression, self-esteem and quality of life in spinal cord injury and social support, depression, self-esteem and quality of life in stroke. Results: The outcome of this study showed that there is a significant difference in depression between both stroke and spinal cord injury patients (p<0.05). The findings also showed a significant association between depression, quality of life and age in stroke patients. Equally, there was a significant association between depression, social support, and age in spinal cord injury patients. Conclusion: It was therefore concluded that even though stroke patients receive more social support and have a higher quality of life, they are still more depressed and have lower self-esteem compared to spinal cord injury patients. It was thus recommended that physiotherapists and other health professionals should make an appropriate assessment of the quality of life, self-esteem, depression and social support of stroke and spinal cord injury patients to enable proper management of these individuals.