Impact of Divorce and Separation for the Women with Spinal Cord Injury in Community Reintegration

Introduction: Marriage is a lawful agreement between a man and woman. They can share their rights and responsibilities under the provision of Law, whereas divorce or separation is dissolving these bonds between married couples. Among Spinal Cord Injury patients this divorce or separation rate is high in Bangladesh. Objectives: The main aim of this study was to identify the impacts of divorce and separation for the women with spinal cord injury during community reintegration. Methodology: This was a mixed-method-type of study where the participant’s demographics data were analyzed by quantitative analysis by using a standard developed questionnaire (CIQ-R) and semi-structured open ended questionnaire to explore the best possible feedback from the participants for maximum 25-minutes duration. The present study conducted with 39 women participants since July 2011 to June 2016 at the CRP. Data were analyzed by SPSS 20 version. Result: Total community integration score was 12.03 and SD was ± 3.87. This score was significantly lower to compare other study for person with SCI. The mean and SD of home integration (2.89, ±1.53), social integration (3.74, ±1.16), productivity (3.12, ±1.81) and electronic social networking (2.54, ±1.86) scores were also lower than the other study. Age, education, occupation, religion, living area, monthly income, marriage before or after injury, duration of marriage, number of children, duration of divorce or separation, ASIA, neurological level was found to be significant predictors of divorce or separation. Four major themes were found in this study (1) Causes of divorce and separation (2) Impact on relationship with family member (3) Impact on social participation (4) Impact on productive activities. Regardless of all participants reported loss of autonomy and functional ability, loss of sex life, loss of self-identity, loss of intimacy within laws, loss of autonomy were the main causes of divorce and separation. Conclusion: Participants scored low in total community integration was lower than compare to other. Suggesting there is a great need to develop interventions by governmental and non-governmental organizations to better integrate individuals of women with divorce and separation with spinal cord injury in the community.