Page 220 - Psychology of Wounds and Wound Care in Clinical Practice ( PDFDrive )

What Is Social Support? 195

Instrumental support : Is practical support- people will
help you out when needed. They will give you a lift to
the clinic, or do the shopping for you and so on.
Appraisal support : The person is encouraged to evaluate
their own health through information and they are then
able to put the stressors in context. In this way, the
stresses and strain of the treatment is put into context
and the individual realises that they are able to com-
plete any necessary changes.
Emotional support : A “shoulder to cry on” is the tradi-
tional descriptor for this form of social support. It is
being loved, cared for, protected emotionally and lis-
tened to.
Esteem support Is a feeling that you are valued or held in
:
esteem by others. If you feel that you are a competent
and skilful person you are more likely to be able to cope
with the stressors.
:
Information support Is support in the form of information
or knowledge which can assist the person in doing the
right thing to look after themselves- providing feedback
on how well they are doing, for example.

For the main part, however, social support is frequently
divided into either practical support or emotional support:
either “help with the shopping”, or a “shoulder to cry on”.
There are a number of methods available to measure
social support. Phenomenological studies have investigated
social support (Brown 2005a , b Victor et al. 2002 ) through a
;
formal methodological interviewing approach. Although this
has a number of benefits in terms of getting to the “real
data”, it can be subjective and time consuming. In contrast to
this interviewing technique there are a number of psycho-
metrically developed questionnaires and scales. For example,
the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ-SF; Sarason 1986 ;
Sarason et al. 1983 , 1987 ). The SSQ-SF is based on two ele-
ments: the perception of the number of others available to whom
a person can turn to in times of need and the degree of satisfac-
tion with the support available. The Medical Outcomes Study: