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Personal Interviews About Life With Paralysis
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Q&A: How did you deal with stress at first?

Emotional Stress a After Spinal Cord Injury
Personal Experiences with Paralysis

Q: How did you deal with stress at first?

Dealing with a sudden spinal cord injury is extremely stressful. In fact, 40% of spinal cord injury patients report experiencing traumatic stress after their injuries, resulting in anxiety and depression. Many patients relied on their families to help them deal with stress, and others found relief through distractions such as watching movies, attending rehabilitation sessions and simply keeping busy. People also managed symptoms by meeting other spinal cord injury patients, or getting to know them through peer counseling programs.

For those whose stress was unmanageable, professional help was needed. Connecting with social workers, therapists or psychologists helped them to find ways to relieve stress. 

We asked 100 men and women living with spinal cord injuries to tell us how they dealt with stress in the days right after their injuries. Watch the best answers in the videos below. 

 

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