SOCIAL SUPPORT IN CRISIS - QUANTITY OR QUALITY

It is suggested that individual differences in reactions to crises depend in part on the variations in social support available to the individual in crisis. A model of the quality of support is derived from research on the effectiveness of interpersonal helping processes. It is predicted that the availability of sources of potential help will be unrelated to crisis outcome, but that the quality of support received will be a determinant of outcome. Different methods of combining measures of the quality of support given by different sources are considered. Data from a controlled trial of crisis interventior, with males hospitalised for treatment of road injuries are used to test the predictions and compare the different scoring methods. The results confirm the predictions that source availability is unrelated to outcome, that source quality is related to outcome, and that crisis intervention has a highly significant effect on the reported quality of support received. Problems in determining the causal direction of the relationships found are discussed, and it is concluded that most probably coping behaviour and support influence each other and jointly determine outcome. It is argued that skills in conveying genuine respect and understanding to people in crisis appear to be lacking among professional care givers and inadequate in many individual's social networks. Action to change this situation is recommended, and the measurement methods reported in the paper offered as a basis for further research, as no other simple generally applicable method has been published with data to substantiate its validity. © 1979.