Psychosocial Difficulties (PSD) Experienced by People across Brain Disorders and the Implications for Occupational Therapy: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Psychosocial difficulties are defined as impairments in mental and body functions, activity limitations and participation restrictions, experienced in common across brain disorders. This cross-sectional study compared the psychosocial difficulties among people with Parkinson’s disease (n = 61), schizophrenia (n = 84) and stroke (n = 70). The extent of difficulties was found to be similar across the three disorders in most of the domains studied. Psychosocial difficulties were also found to be associated with sociodemographic and illness related factors. The results challenge the brain disorder-specific approach to psychosocial difficulties commonly carried out in neurological and psychiatric research. Implications to occupational therapy are presented.

Keywords:

• Disability
• horizontal epidemiology
• occupational therapy
• occupational functioning
• psychosocial difficulties
• rehabilitation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants who contributed their time for this study. We would also like to thank Dr. K.S. Jacob (Consultant Psychiatrist, Ballarat Mental Health Service, Victoria) for his comments on the manuscript and Ms. K. Reka (Lecturer, Department of Biostatistics, Christian Medical College, Vellore) for her suggestions on data analysis. We also thank the reviewers who provided excellent feedback to improve the quality of the final manuscript.

Declaration of interest statement

There are no present or potential, financial or non-financial competing interests reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

No funding received