Psychological Reaction to Spinal Cord Injury and the Relationship of Personality to the Resulting Neurological Dysfunctions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among the variables of the level of spinal cord injury (SCI), completeness of the injury, time since in-jury, and motor function improvement, erection, bladder control, and personality factors derived from the Mini-Mult version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Per-sonality Inventory (MMPI). The subjects were 64 SCI patients admitted to the SCI unit less than 1 year following their injury. The MMPI results revealed that 81 % of the patients had one or more clinical scales elevated above two standard devia-tions. No statistically significant relationships between MMPI variables and phys-ical findings were found. Key Words: Spinal cord injury—Psychological adjust-ment—Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Most serious diseases have some effect on, or are affected by, the patient’s personality. Therefore, many clinicians try to take into consideration the pa-tient’s special states and traits that may have contrib-uted to the cause of the disease or to the treatment (1)