Struggles of resiliency: women negotiating interpersonal relationality following burn injury
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Date
2016
Authors
Hunter, Tevya
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Abstract
Burn injury is considered a distressing and traumatic injury often leading to psychological disturbances such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and body image dissatisfaction. At the same time, the literature also suggests that people demonstrate surprising resiliency when dealing with their burn injury. How women who have experienced burns understand their injury and what it means to them to be a resilient, is largely ignored in the burn literature. This study addressed these shortcomings by exploring narratives from thirteen women, recruited from a regional burn center, who experienced a burn injury of up to 30% of their total body surface area (TBSA). Two interviews were conducted with each participant. The first interview employed a photo elicitation technique whereby photographs taken by the participant of her life with a burn injury were used to elicit stories in the context of the interview. The second interview was conducted using a semi-structured interview schedule developed to investigate experiences and understandings of distress and resiliency. The interview transcripts were analyzed using narrative analysis in order to explore how women constructed stories about distress and resiliency following burn injury. The findings show three main struggles the women faced in negotiating resiliency which all pertained to relational tension, that is, relationships with others. The three struggles of resiliency identified in the study are 1) feeling as though the body was public, 2) deciding how to share their burn experience with others, and 3) accepting support from others while maintaining independence. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of a relational theory named self-silencing which delineates how women behave socially to maintain relationships by inhibiting self-expression. Findings are also discussed relative to current research in the areas of burn injury and resiliency.
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Keywords
Burn injury, Relationality, Women, Resiliency