Browsing by Author "Sepänmäki, Pauliina"

The Objective. According to many studies, social isolation, decreased quality of life and psychosocial problems such as depression are some of the most difficult consequences of aphasia. The aim of this study was to explore the amount and the quality of aphasic peoples' social participation. The questions of the study were how much and what kind of social events did the participants have and also how happy they were with the quality of the participation. In addition, one aim of this study was to find out what kind of thoughts did the participants have about the impact of aphasia on their social life. The further goal was to survey the importance of aphasia groups. Data and Methods. Four chronically aphasic people were included in the study. They all took part in an aphasia group in an adult education center. The participants kept a diary for two weeks, marked all of their social occasions and gave a satisfaction-score for each of them. Later the participants took part in a semi-structured interview where their views and experiences on social life were examined. In addition, the participants filled the Communication Activity Log to evaluate the amount and the quality of their daily communication Results. The participants participated in different social events every day despite of the severity of the aphasia. The quality of the communication did not seem to have effect on the amount of the communication. The satisfaction in social events was reasonably high with only a few exceptions. Overall, the participants thought that they had succeed to adapt to live with aphasia. Despite the difficulties in communication, they felt that they could participate in social life although they had some limitations. They all avoided occasions with a lot of people because they felt that it was difficult to participate in conversations. All of the participants took regularly part in activities that were targeted for aphasic people because they felt that such occasions were easy to participate in. All of the participants had lost friends after the stroke, and hoped they could participate more in social occasions. Severe solitude or social isolation wasn't, however reported. All of the participants had regular contact with the people that were important for them. The participants felt that the general knowledge about aphasia was quite low, which made it more difficult to communicate with strangers. It was easier to communicate with familiar people, but even the closest family members didn't always understand the consequences of aphasia.