Page 219 - Psychology of Wounds and Wound Care in Clinical Practice ( PDFDrive )

194 Chapter 8. Family, Friends and Social Support

(Sarason et al. 1983 ). There is a distinction between the exis-
tence of social relationships and the functions provided by
these. That is, the structure would be based on ‘how many
friends, colleagues, or family relationships’ you have and the
functional aspect would refer to what these do.
Essentially you can have lots of friends but have no inter-
action with them which is not useful to us. Social support can
come from a variety of different sources and a variety of
types of support (Cohen et al. 2000 ), for instance, spouses,
relatives, friends, neighbours, co-workers, or superiors. But it
can also come from professional sources (e.g. the nurse or
other health care professional) and this can help in reducing
stress, thus becoming a useful and advantageous social inter-
action. The type and amount of social support an individual
receives depends upon their social network but also on vari-
ous demographic factors such as their age, sex, culture, socio-
economic status and so on.
Generally social support comes in one of five types (see
Fig. 8.1 ).
To explore the concepts presented in Fig. 8.1 in more detail:

Instrumental
support

Practical Appraisal
support support
Social
support

Emotional Esteem
support support

Figure 8.1 Sources of social support