Adaptation to disability and depression in people with acquired physical disabilities : a case study at the Center of Medical Rehabilitation (CMR), Lao. P.D.R.

Abstract

The research aimed to study the factors related to adaptation to disability of persons with acquired physical disabilities, study the depression of persons with acquired physical disabilities, and study the relation between adaptation to disability and depression of persons with acquired physical disabilities. The factors in this study included marital status, education, income, disability level, disability duration, adaptation to disability, and depression. The research instruments were (1) adaptation to disability scale-revise and (2) Thai depression inventory which were distributed to 100 people with acquired physical disabilities who served at Center of Medical rehabilitation. The data gathered were analyzed using the statistics for data analysis were frequency, percentage, median, quartile deviation t-test, Analysis of variance, Spearmen rank correlation coefficient, and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that the people with acquired physical disabilities who had higher education were able to adapt to disability better than those with lower education (p-value = 0.010). The people with acquired physical disabilities who were single, divorced, and widow were able to adapt to disability better than those who were married (p-value < 0.001). The people with acquired physical disabilities with high income had a low adaptation to disability. On the other hand, people with acquired physical disabilities with no income and low income in Lao PDR had better adaptation to disability (p-value < 0.001). The persons who had mild disability have better adaptability than people who had severe physical disability (P-value < 0.001). This indicated that the duration of acquired physical disabilities was positively correlated with adaptation to disability at a low level (rs= 0.511, p-value < 0.001). The result of the study indicated that adaptation to acquired physical disabilities negatively correlated with depression at a low level (p-value < 0.01). The results from this study suggested that staff at the CMR should be aware of the psychological factors that were related to rehabilitation. Counseling service during the rehabilitation process could help persons to better adapt to their disability.