Stroke survivors, caregivers may benefit from spirituality
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Spirituality improved quality of life for patients who survived stroke and for their caregivers who reported depressive symptoms, according to a study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
“The results of this study highlight the protective role of spirituality understood not as religiosity, but as the individual’s perception of life within the context of the culture and value systems of the society and in relation to the individual’s goals, expectations, standards and concerns,” Gianluca Pucciarelli, PhD, FAHA, research fellow at the University of Rome, told Healio. “Spirituality seems to be a coping variable that ‘moderates’ the effect of psychological variables (ie, depression) on individual variables (ie, quality of life). Being a coping variable, spirituality may alter the meaning of the events, making them less stressful in nature, moderate the negative associations leading to problems or manage the level of emotional response to stressors.”
Researchers analyzed data from 213 dyads of stroke survivors (mean age, 71 years; 49% women) and their care partners (mean age, 52 years; 66% women) who were enrolled at discharge from 10 rehabilitation hospitals in Italy. Care partners were defined as those who provided most of the informal care for the stroke survivor. Dyads were followed up every 3 months for 1 year.
Several measures were taken during the study for the stroke survivor and care partner, including anxiety, depression and spirituality. Researchers also assessed physical, environmental, social and psychological quality of life.
The spirituality of the stroke survivor significantly weakened the link between a care partner’s depressive symptoms and the psychological quality of life of the survivor (beta = 0.05; P < .001). This specifically focused on the significant interaction between depressive symptoms of the care partner and the survivor’s spirituality (effect size = 0.24). A similar effect related to spirituality was also observed for the care partner’s baseline psychological quality of life (beta = 0.04; P < .001), with a significant interaction between depressive symptoms of the care partner and the spirituality of the survivor (effect size = 0.24).
Spirituality of the care partner was linked to their physical quality of life at baseline (beta = 0.28; P < .001).
“Our study emphasizes the importance for clinicians to view survivors holistically; not just as a patient with symptoms and disabilities, but also as an individual made up of emotional needs, suffering, hopes, faith, religious beliefs and desires, and also part of an interdependent unit with their caregivers,” Pucciarelli said in an interview. “Usually in the international context, there is a tendency to put the patient at the center of care, but it would be advisable to change the thinking strategy. We should start developing projects that may put the dyad at the center of care and not only the patient, because as we have seen, stroke does not impact only on the survivors’ life.” – by Darlene Dobkowski
For more information:
Gianluca Pucciarelli, PhD, FAHA, can be reached at gianluca.pucciarelli@uniroma2.it.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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Pucciarelli G, et al. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2020;doi:10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.119.006129.
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