Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Interaction Barriers and Mental Health among Older Adults with Physical Disabilities.

翻译后摘要：本项目将探讨感知障碍，以了解这些看法如何塑造心理健康的老年人与身体残疾的社会交往。这项研究将加强对残疾和老年人心理健康的基本了解，超越对身体残疾与心理健康状况不佳直接相关的理解，强调残疾如何以及为什么会损害情感健康。调查结果将通过其对老年人健康的各种利益攸关方的效用产生积极影响：为康复医院的干预战略提供信息;帮助家庭提供一个有利于康复的环境，提高福祉;使健康保险公司能够制定早期和有效的做法，减少更多的身心健康下降;并告知建筑师和设计师身体残疾的老年人遇到物理环境的方式，以优化美国残疾人法案（ADA）的实施。在美国，超过三分之一的老年人身体残疾。残疾可能限制了参与人际交往的能力，因此，身体残疾的老年人的心理健康可能反映了未满足的社会需求。了解导致身体残疾者社会互动减少的过程很重要，因为社会孤立不仅与心理健康状况不佳有关，还与自我评估健康状况较低，医疗保健使用和成本增加，甚至死亡率有关。该项目的主要目标是确定和探索如何感知人际和环境障碍，社会互动塑造心理健康的老年人身体残疾。为此，拟议项目将采用混合方法设计。来自国家社会生活，健康和老龄化项目（NSHAP）的全国代表性调查数据的分析将与身体残疾的老年人的深入访谈相结合。调查数据将用于确定身体残疾、社会互动和心理健康之间的联系。然而，由于社会交往障碍的个性化，很难通过大型调查的标准化封闭式问卷设计来评估这些障碍。因此，半结构化的采访与60老年人的身体残疾谁是（前）病人在康复中心在中西部将被用来允许个人的详细探索？对使社会交往困难的因素的看法。该项目的进展和研究结果将测试一个扩展的理论模型，该模型整合了生物心理社会和压力过程理论，以确定感知到的人际和环境障碍，社会互动的情况依赖，从而间歇性的压力源，塑造身体残疾的老年人的心理健康

Abstract:This project will explore perceived barriers to social interaction among older adults with physical disabilities in order to understand how these perceptions shape mental health. This research will enhance basic understanding of disability and older adult mental health by moving beyond understanding physical disability as directly linked to poorer mental health to emphasize how and why disability compromises emotional well-being. The findings will have a positive impact through their utility for various stakeholders of older adults' health by: informing intervention strategies of rehabilitation hospitals; helping families provide a supportive environment for recovery that enhances well-being; allowing health insurers to develop early and effective practices that reduce additional mental and physical health declines; and informing architects and designers of the ways in which older adults with physical disabilities encounter the physical environment to optimize implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Over a third of older adults in the U.S. are physically disabled. Disablement likely restricts the ability to engage in interpersonal interactions and thus the mental health of older adults with physical disabilities may reflect unmet social needs. Understanding the processes that lead to lower social interaction among those with physical disabilities is important because social isolation is associated with not only poor mental health but also lower self-rated health, greater healthcare use and cost, and even mortality. The main objective of the project is to identify and explore how perceived interpersonal and environmental barriers to social interaction shape mental health among older adults with physical disabilities. To do this, the proposed project will employ a mixed methods design. Analyses of nationally representative survey data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) will be combined with in-depth interviews with older adults with physical disabilities. The survey data will be used to establish the association between physical disability, social interaction, and mental health. However, assessment of perceived barriers to social interaction, given their individualized nature, would be difficult to achieve through the standardized closed-response questionnaire design of large surveys. Consequently, semi-structured interviews with 60 older adults with physical disabilities who are (former) patients at a rehabilitation center in the Midwest will be used to allow for detailed exploration of individuals? perceptions of factors that make social interaction difficult. This project advances and the findings will test an expanded theoretical model that integrates biopsychosocial and stress process theories to identify perceived interpersonal and environmental barriers to social interaction as situationally dependent and thus intermittent stressors that shape the mental health of older adults with physical disabilities