Aspects of social intelligence in reference relatives of patients with bipolar affective disorder
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14739/2310-1210.2017.4.105113Keywords:
bipolar disorder, social intelligence, quality of lifeAbstract
Objective. Aspects of social intelligence in reference relatives of patients with bipolar disorder in their social functioning context were studied in this research.
Methods. M. O’Sullivan and J. P. Guilford social intelligence test and SF-36 were chosen as psychological testing research instruments.
A total of 76 reference relatives of patients with bipolar disorder were involved into this survey under informed consent conditions. Control group included 55 mentally healthy respondents, in whose families there was no mentally sick family member.
Results. The study revealed reference relatives of patients with bipolar disorder to show a decrease in all indicators of social intelligence creating significant obstacles to successful social-psychological adaptation of individual family members and harmonious functioning of the family as a whole. As a result of the study, some differences in the structure of social intelligence of reference relatives of patients with bipolar disorder were found in comparison with control group: difficulties in assessing the intentions of communication, predicting their behavior and the logic of further events; insufficient understanding of consequences of their own actions and actions of others; difficulties in assessing conditions and feelings by their non-verbal symptoms in the process of interpersonal communication; decreased ability to estimate the speech of interlocutor quickly and correctly according to the particular situation, to find the appropriate tone of communication. In reference relatives of patients with bipolar disorder, adaptive personal resources in interpersonal interaction are reduced, thus they experience more difficulties in understanding the interlocutor, they are not very communicative, but more tactful and friendly in communicative interaction compared to the control group respondents.
As evidenced by the data, reference family members providing social support for patients with affective disorder exhibit a significant decrease in quality of life, particularly due to emotional and social functioning, general and mental health, which correlates with the general level of social intelligence.
Conclusions. Social intelligence features revealed by this study are an important explanation of communicative dysfunctions in families where one of the family members has bipolar disorder, and it must be considered to develop appropriate psychoeducational and psychocorrection programs.
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