Are spousal partner perceptions of continuity and discontinuity within the relationship linked to the symptoms of acquired brain injury?

Abstract

Purpose

Some partners experience their relationship with a person with brain injury as the continuation of a loving pre-injury relationship (continuity), but others feel that the pre-injury relationship has been lost and replaced with something very different (discontinuity). This study provided a quantitative test of claims arising from qualitative research that certain symptoms of the injury might contribute to the experience of discontinuity – specifically, lack of emotional warmth, reduced social interaction and aggression.

Methods

Fifty-three partners providing care to someone with brain injury completed questionnaires assessing continuity/discontinuity and a range of symptoms (emotional warmth, conversational ability, aggression, depression, somatic complaints, cognition, communication, aggression, and physical disability).

Results

Discontinuity was significantly correlated with all symptom variables except physical disability but, in a multiple regression, only the measures of emotional warmth, conversation, aggression, and depression made a significant unique contribution.

Conclusions

Discontinuity has been linked with relationship dissatisfaction and dysfunction, greater burden and distress, and a less person-centred approach to the provision of care. Identifying which symptoms contribute to discontinuity may enable partners to be more effectively supported in terms of how they make sense of and react to those symptoms, so that a greater sense of continuity may be retained.

Implications for rehabilitation

• In a marriage/partnership after brain injury, some people struggle to maintain the loving relationship they shared with the person with the brain injury before the injury. This has an impact on the psychological wellbeing of the couple and on the quality of care provided.

• Certain symptoms of the brain injury may make it more difficult to maintain the loving pre-injury relationship.

• These include aggression, depression, a lack of emotional warmth within the relationship, and more general difficulties in making conversation.

• Caregivers dealing with these symptoms may need extra support in making sense of, and coming to terms with, these changes.

Keywords:

• Marriage
• caregivers
• interpersonal relationships
• relationship continuity
• brain injury
• aggression

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.