Women with Spinal Cord Injuries
The Stress and Coping Over the Life Course: A Perspective on Women with SCI study focuses specifically on women with a spinal cord injury. Funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, it is conducted jointly by the University of Michigan and the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan Wayne State University. The purpose of the study is to learn more about how women adapt to community living after incurring a spinal cord injury SCI.
We know that women with SCI, like their male counterparts, have to cope with many difficulties when they return home after rehabilitation. Yet we know very little about the barriers or obstacles to independent living that women encounter in their everyday lives. We are learning more about how women with SCI deal with stressful situations they encounter in everyday activities in a number of life areas, such as personal health and medical care, family life, work and leisure, and community involvement. We would also like to know how women with SCI view their quality of life after SCI.
Project Goals
This study:
- documents from a contextual life perspective the ways women with SCI perceive and respond to stressful life events
- explores, in depth, effective and ineffective ways of coping
- assesses the impact these strategies have on quality of life.
Information Collection
Fifty participants are being identified and recruited from:
- University of Michigan and Southeastern Michigan SCI Model Systems databases
- Michigan Centers for Independent Living
- referral contacts of professional colleagues
- persons known to the investigators and other study participants
- a media outreach campaign.
During the first two years, in-depth, audiotaped interviews (in person or by telephone) are being conducted with participants who also complete objective questionnaires. During the third year, two focus group sessions will be conducted with a smaller sample of study participants.
Study Rationale
The ratio of men to women who sustain spinal cord injury (SCI) is approximately four to one, with current national prevalence of women estimated to be 36,900. Much of the research has focused on men and may not reflect the experiences of women with SCI.
I think that it's really important to have close friends who you can really speak from your heart with, you know, establishing those deep connections.
It's so easy today to be isolated and alone.just going through the motions in this fast-paced society."
Julie Harrison, T-7 SCI
Even more than their male counterparts, women with SCI endure multiple minority status, poverty, lack of education, job discrimination and restricted choices, and are often burdened by extra care-taking responsibilities—all of which may elevate their risk for stress-related disorders. Adjusting to life with a major physical disability threatens the most entrenched and fundamental aspects of women's lives. These include physical independence and mobility, their social roles as women in our culture and their meaningful participation in the social life of the family and community.
In short, women with SCI face an array of stressors that we know very little about. We also do not have information on what stress-buffers and more complex coping strategies they use. Medical rehabilitation research has primarily focused on the life reorganization process of men following SCI, in part because the majority of persons with SCI are men, but also because the life course trajectory is generally much less variable for men than for women. The proposed study focuses attention on the sources of gender-role related distress for women over the life course and will therefore provide a valuable contribution to our existing knowledge base in rehabilitation.
Findings will have wide-ranging implications for clinical practice, consumer education and health policy. The experiences shared by our participants can provide a map for psychologists, physicians, nurses, vocational counselors, social workers, occupational and physical therapists, and others charged with the responsibility of helping women adjust to life after SCI. We expect the results of our study to be especially useful to SCI consumers who are women, as well as their families, who find it difficult to obtain information and support systems to address their life situation. To the degree that women's adjustment to SCI has similarities to adjustment to other sudden-onset impairments (severe burns, traumatic brain injury, stroke), the findings of this research are also expected to benefit clinicians working in other domains of rehabilitation as well.
