The Effect of Orthoses on Mental Health: Assessing Stress, Anxiety and Depression in Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63682/jns.v14i1.8362Keywords:
Spinal cord injury, orthosis, DASS-21, depression, anxiety, stress, mental health, rehabilitationAbstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is usually associated with serious physical and psychological complications, such as extensive depression levels, anxiety, and stress. Orthoses are mostly prescribed to improve mobility, whereas their effect on the outcome of mental health has not been thoroughly studied scientifically.
This paper focused on determining the outcome of the orthotic care on the psychological welfare or rather stress, anxiety, and depression of those with spinal cord injuries after a time interval of 8 weeks.
An observational study that involved 60 SCI patients was carried out. The results of psychological distress were measured with DASS-21 questionnaire at four time points; baseline (before wearing orthoses), and 4 th, 6 th and 8 th weeks after the orthotic treatment started. To analyze the data, the IBM SPSS Statistics (v. 26) were applied. The test of Shapiro-wilk indicated non-normality of the distribution thus necessitating the application of Friedman Test of repeated measures analysis.
The difference between the 8-week intervention and baseline was statistically significant in the three DASS-21 subscales stress (198.58, p < 0.0001), depression (99.79, p < 0.0001), and anxiety (101.54, p < 0.0001). Such results explain that the use of orthotics was related to the recorded improvements in the mental health.
Completion of the orthotic intervention greatly reduces the psychological distress in the patients with spinal cord injuries. Orthoses as a component of the comprehensive rehabilitation approach can bring two sets of benefits: not only functional but also the psychovisceral well-being
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