Social skills: A resource for more social support, lower depression levels, higher quality of life and participation in individuals with spinal cord injury?

Abstract

Objective: to examine the relevance of social skills and their different dimensions (i.e. expressivity, sensitivity and control) in relation to social support, depression, participation and quality of life (QoL) in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Design: cross-sectional data collection within Swiss Spinal Cord Injury Cohort (SwiSCI).

Setting: community-based.

Participants: a total of 503 individuals with SCI.

Interventions: not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: depression, participation and QoL were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Utrecht Scale for Evaluation of Rehabilitation-Participation (USER-Participation) and 5 selected items of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF). The Social Skills Inventory (SSI), and the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ6) were used to assess social skills (expressivity, sensitivity, control) and social support.

Results: structural equation modeling was conducted. In model 1 (chi-square 27.81, df=19, p=.087, RMSEA=.033, 90% CI=.000–.052) social skills as a latent variable was related to social support (?=.31/R2=.10), depression (?=-.31/Total R2=.42) and QoL (?=.46/R2=.25). Social support partially mediated the effect of social skills on QoL (indirect effect: ?=.04, p=.02) but not on depression or participation. In model 2 (chi-square of 27.96, df=19, p=.084, RMSEA=.031, 90%CI=.000–.053) the social skills dimension expressivity showed a path coefficient of ?=.20 to social support and ?=.18 to QoL. Sensitivity showed a negative path coefficient to QoL (?=-.15) and control a path coefficient of ?=-.15 to depression and ?=.24 to QoL.

Conclusions: social skills are a resource related to more social support, lower depression scores and higher QoL

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