Resilience, pain and quality of life in people with physical disabilities: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction

More than a thousand million people live with a certain type of disability over the world (more than a 15% of the population worldwide). In Spain, 2.5 millions of people suffer from a physical disability. Disability can be understood as an interaction of the individual's health condition (disease, illness…) and his/her environmental and personal factors. Resilience could be included as a powerful personal factor, which would play a major role in the individual's quality of life. Resilience can be defined as a universal basic capacity to prevent, minimize or overcome life's adversities, even reaching a change in the life of the individual.

Aim

To determine the association among resilience, pain and quality of life in people with physical disabilities.

Materials and methods

An electronic search of several databases (Psycinfo, Medline, Pubmed…) was performed using the terms resilience, physical disability, and physical illness among others.

Results

– Pain and resilience show an important relationship. Factors as acceptance, pain beliefs and self-efficacy are directly related with a lower pain interference.

– Resilience and quality of life show a strong positive relationship.

Conclusion

Several factors are related to resilience in people with physical disabilities. Resilience seems to be an important capacity that helps individual with physical disabilities overcome adversities. Further analyses are required.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.