Social Support after Stroke: Influence of Source of Support on Stroke Survivors’ Health-Related Quality of Life

Introduction: Social support has often been identified as a key determinant of important stroke outcomes such as health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Information on the influence of the specific sources of social support on poststroke HRQoL is however scarce. This study examined the influence of social support received from family, friends and significant others on stroke survivors’ HRQoL.

Methods: One hundred consenting stroke survivors were purposively recruited from two tertiary hospitals in Northern Nigeria into this cross-sectional study. Data on the stroke survivors’ socio-demographic and stroke-related attributes were obtained. Perceived support from friends, family and significant others was assessed using the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) while HRQoL was assessed using the Stroke-Specific Quality of Life-12 (SS-QoL-12) measure. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to identify the independent influence of the different sources of social support on HRQoL.

Results: Mean age of the stroke survivors was 51.39±13.52 years. None of the specific sources of social support had significant independent influence on overall and domain-specific HRQoL. Rather, overall social support, which represents the aggregate of support from each social support source, namely friends, family and significant others, had significant and independent positive influence on psychosocial (β = 0.74, P = 0.02) and overall (β = 0.56, P = 0.04) HRQoL.

Conclusion: The outcome of this study suggests that social support from a combination of sources (overall social support), rather than support from any particular source, significantly and positively influenced the HRQoL of stroke survivors.