Words of recovery: Finding meaning in illness and injury
Item
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Title
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Words of recovery: Finding meaning in illness and injury
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:183684216c27:10381
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identifier
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10502
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Creator
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Pranikoff, Julie R.,
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Contributor
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Setha M. Low
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Developmental psychology | Attention | Garden | Hospital | Meaning-making | Rehabilitation | Restoration
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Abstract
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Past findings in the fields of environmental psychology and health psychology have supported the notions that individuals are best able to adapt to illness and injury if they are exposed to natural, restorative environments, and if they can create personal meaning of their medical condition. Although patient well-being is a concern in both of these fields, this project was the first to study these literatures in conjunction with each other. The goal was to elucidate the relationship between restorative environments and patient coping outcomes.;Sixteen inpatients hospitalized in an urban rehabilitation medical center participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to take part in a meaning-making interview in their hospital rooms or gardens located on the hospital grounds. Data were also collected on current pain and anxiety before and after the meaning-making interview and during a follow-up one day later.;Results from the study exhibited a significant difference in patients' perceived restorativeness of the gardens compared with the hospital rooms in only one of five domains of attention restoration theory (fascination ); propensity for meaning-making was not found to be related to the location where the interviews took place; and patients did not exhibit emotional and physical changes as a result of spending time in the natural environment. There were, however, two notable findings. First, each participant fell somewhere along an attribution-finding spectrum. Some participants had "found" the answers to why they became ill or injured prior to the interview, and the interview served as an opportunity to voice these answers. Others utilized the interview as an opportunity to question attribution---that is, through the interview, they continued their search or even commenced the process of finding attribution for why they became ill or injured. No matter how developed an attribution was, however, it was clear that the participants developed attributions that enabled them to understand their illness experience within the context of their lives. Secondly, most participants who found personal meaning in their illness experiences disclosed meanings indicative of posttraumatic growth (PTG). The PTG domains most frequently referred to were appreciation of life, relating to others, and personal strength.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
