Self-esteem of severely burned patients.

As a part of a retrospective rehabilitation study conducted in 1977, 320 persons treated at a major burn center between 1956 and 1976 were interviewed by professional survey research interviewers using a specially developed 519-item questionnaire that included standard socioeconomic data along with information about the person's life pattern subsequent to the burn. In addition, several complex dimensions of personality were measured through multiple indicators rather than by single items. According to the midpoint of the scale of Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory, 85% of the respondents had adequate to high self-esteem. Although the size of the burn and part of the body burned did not seem to significantly affect self-esteem, age when burned and time since burn did. Disfigured females had significantly lower self-esteem than disfigured males. Social support, life satisfaction, involvement in social and recreational activities and employment were found to influence the group as a whole. Respondents with low self-esteem spent twice as many days in bed and missed considerably more days of work in the year prior to the study than did those with moderate or high self-esteem. The findings in this study indicate with some certainty that the majority of burned people make a successful adjustment following even large and disfiguring injuries and that successful rehabilitation is long-term and episodic in nature.