Rehabilitation psychological experience of the elderly within 6 months of initial disability: a qualitative study

Abstract

Purpose To explore the rehabilitation psychological experience of the Chinese elderly within 6 months of initial disability, understand and analyse their real feelings and thoughts to help caregivers in providing support. Materials and methods We adopted the descriptive phenomenology method to purposefully select elderly with initial disability within 6 months from neurorehabilitation departments of 2 hospitals in China, who were able to cooperate with researchers to conduct interviews. The data were collected from semi-structured interviews and analysed using Colaizzi’s analysis method. Results fifteen participants with an average age of 73.7(±9.0) years and an average disability time of 3.2 (±1.5) months were interviewed. Four themes were identified: (1) the discomfort of losing the sense of self; (2) feeling trapped over unmet needs; (3) ambivalence towards rehabilitation; (4) expectations and hopelessness for the future. Traditional Chinese thoughts such as family concepts played an important role in the generation of complex emotions. Conclusion The elderly had the desire and motivation to recover and return to the families and society. However, due to personal, family and social factors, they still felt ambivalence towards rehabilitation, self-worth and life, which hindered rehabilitation. Therefore, carers should focus on the elderly’s psychological states, taking corresponding measures to satisfy their complex demands and motivate long-term recovery. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Chinese elderly with initial disability often had a strong sense of ambivalence towards self-worth, rehabilitation and life, among which the influence of the traditional Chinese family concept counts. Health care personnel should improve the positive coping ability of the elderly to promote their harmonious coexistence with disability, rebuild their personal values, develop their rehabilitation potential. Health care departments need to provide support to the elderly and their families to maximize the positive role of the family in the rehabilitation process of the elderly. In order to alleviate the discomfort of disabled elderly in rehabilitation and enhance compliance, there is a need to improve the hard environment (rehabilitation technologies, etc.) and soft environment (rehabilitation concept and service quality, etc.).