Social Support and Aging with a Spinal Cord Injury: Canadian and British Experiences

The study set out to describe the support systems of a large multicenter sample of people with long-standing spinal cord injuries (SCIs) and to explore the effects of age, duration of injury, problems, demographics, and well-being on reporting of social support. It was part of a longitudinal study of aging and SCI, involving British and Canadian participants. A total of 290 participants were recruited from four large, well-established databases in the United Kingdom and Canada. The sample included individuals with an average age of 57 years and an average duration of 33 years. The study showed that informational support was perceived by participants as less available to them than either instrumental or emotional support. Further, it showed that age has a direct negative effect on satisfaction with social support but an indirect positive effect on availability of support, mediated by well-being. Disability, on the other hand, has an indirect negative effect on satisfaction, mediated by problems. According to the model developed and tested here, the availability of social support has a significant negative direct effect on the experience of problems, but the presence or absence of problems does not affect the availability of social support.