| Factors associated with resilience, quality of life and self-esteem: Adolescents who have experienced multiple neurosurgeries and chronic pain (2007) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| The purpose of this cross-sectional, correlational study was to examine adolescent factors, illness-related factors, and social support factors associated with resilience (positive perception of self-esteem and quality of life) in adolescents who have experienced multiple neurosurgeries and chronic pain. This study also examined the relationship between an adolescent's perception of coping styles and quality of life and his/her mother's perceptions of the coping styles and quality of life of her child. The sample consisted of 19 adolescents between the ages of eleven and eighteen, who have had multiple neurosurgeries and chronic pain and their mothers. Results showed trends toward higher resilience in younger adolescents and boys; however, these tendencies were not statistically significant. The small sample size likely played a role in not obtaining statistical significance. However, gender differences in regard to pain intensity and coping strategies were found. Girls reported that their worst pain in the previous month was significantly higher than the level reported by boys. Boys reported greater frequency of use of positive self-statements, behavioral distraction, and cognitive distraction. Two subscales on the pain catastrophizing measure---magnification and helplessness---were significantly correlated with the adolescent's reported use of emotion focused avoidance coping strategies. Significant correlations between pain intensity and several functional status items (general activity, mood, ability to attend school, and quality of sleep) were also found. Adolescents' and mothers' perceptions of the adolescent's frequency of use of two pain coping strategies, positive self-statements and cognitive distraction, differed significantly with adolescents reporting more frequent use of these pain coping strategies than their mothers. Mothers also rated their child's quality of life lower than the adolescents themselves did. Research on adolescents with neurosurgical conditions and chronic pain is almost non-existent in the literature. Thus, this study is a new area of investigation and only begins to "scratch the surface" regarding how adolescents cope with chronic pain. A larger study of adolescents with multiple neurosurgeries and/or chronic pain needs to be conducted, perhaps using multiple sites to obtain a larger sample size and thus increase the power of the findings. | |||||||||
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