The Reality Of Life Satisfaction Following A Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury
The perception of what life is like following a traumatic spinal cord injury can be very different than the reality, but researchers believe there is value in understanding both viewpoints.
This desire to learn more about the impact of traumatic spinal cord injury on psychological well-being resulted in a collaborative project called An Examination of Life Satisfaction Following Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Induced Quadriplegia and Paraplegia: Comparing Society’s Expectations to Patient Reported Life Satisfaction.
The research team included the University of New Brunswick Saint John’s Dr. Lisa Best, experimental psychologist, and her PhD candidate Derek Gaudet, as well as neurosurgeons Dr. Najmedden Attabib and Dr. George Kolyvas from the Horizon Health Network, with support from the Canada East Spine Centre.
“Life satisfaction is a global measure used in psychology. It is a good way to measure how happy you are with your life,” said Best. “In my lab, we’ve worked on several projects before this one that have examined life satisfaction in patient populations (including traumatic brain injuries, eating disorders, and cancer), and how factors such as physical illnesses and psychological distress affect life satisfaction.”
As a PhD candidate in experimental and applied psychology at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, Gaudet already had an interest in life satisfaction when he got a research position with Attabib.
“We really started thinking about differences between life satisfaction, which tends to be used in psychology research and quality of life, which is more commonly used in medical research. Derek became interested in those differences and understanding how each impact overall wellness in patients with a traumatic spinal cord injury,” said Best.
Quality of life is often used to measure overall well-being in people with traumatic spinal cord injury, she notes, but they have found that satisfaction with life isn’t perfectly predicted by quality of life.
Attabib is a principal investigator with the Praxis Spinal Cord Injury Registry, giving the research team access to data on 8,000 patients from across Canada. To gather information on the general public, they used an online survey, beginning with university students and spreading out from there through social media and targeted support groups.
“When we designed the initial study and collected the comparison, or the control group, data we included measures that were already being used with the (Praxis) registry so that we could make direct comparisons between the samples,” said Gaudet. “Now we are working on conditioning the data set so that statistical analyses can be conducted.”
According to Gaudet, although some of the results from the control population were expected, the severity of the drop in life satisfaction that the general population thought that they would experience following a traumatic spinal cord injury was unexpected.
The full data set from the patient population has not been analyzed yet, he said.
“We suspect that the drop in life satisfaction is not so dramatic in the patient population, but the fact the general population reported such a severe perceived decrease in life satisfaction could contribute to patient’s initial psychological reaction to their injuries.”
They are also finding some interesting differences based on gender and personality types.
The goal of the project is two-fold, said Best. They want to be able to use what they learn to improve the lives of people with a traumatic spinal cord injury and to help inform professional practice.
“We can send a strong message about all of this to medical professionals about how happy those patients are with their lives,” said Attabib. “The other thing, I think, is that this project will have acceptance internationally because spinal cord injury across the ocean is treated differently. I think this kind of project has huge potential out there.”
While the analysis of the patient sample is ongoing, they have presented some of their findings about the healthy, control population at both local and international conferences, and have published that specific data.
Attabib believes the collaboration is a good one, bringing together psychological researchers and medical professionals to help patients with spinal cord injuries.
Funding for this project was provided through generous donations to the Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation to provide funding for increased excellence in innovative research initiatives in New Brunswick and Horizon Health Network Saint John.
This story was sponsored by the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation.