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. 2024 Nov 6:12:1417940.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1417940. eCollection 2024.

Inferiority feelings mediate the impact of subjective social support on anxiety/depression symptoms in individuals with physical disabilities

Yiyang Liu #  1 , Wenjing Xu #  1 , Shanshan Liu #  1 , Yuqing Song  1 , Lin Li  2 , Shunfei Li  2 , Hongguang Chen  1
Affiliations

Inferiority feelings mediate the impact of subjective social support on anxiety/depression symptoms in individuals with physical disabilities

Yiyang Liu et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Persons with physical disabilities are more likely to suffer from psychological symptoms and inferiority feelings, and social support plays an important role in improving those symptoms. However, the interaction between psychological symptoms, inferiority feelings and social support is yet to be understood.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate anxiety, depression, and inferiority feelings among individuals with physical disabilities in a Chinese sample. The questionnaire included the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7, Patient Health Questionnaire 9, Self-designed Disability Questionnaire, and Social Support Rating Scale including three dimensions: subjective social support, objective social support and utilization of social support.

Results: Out of the 1,453 respondents with physical disabilities, 49.7, 60.4, and 62.5% reported experiencing anxiety, depression, and inferiority feelings, respectively. Factors such as time since identification of physical disabilities, comorbidities, daily travel, social interaction, internet use, subjective social support, and inferiority feelings were found to be associated with anxiety or depression symptoms among physically disabled individuals. Subjective social support was found to be associated with inferiority feelings, which partly mediated the effect of subjective social support on anxiety symptoms by 37.4% and depression symptoms by 28.7%.

Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of addressing the psychological well-being of physically disabled individuals in addition to their physical rehabilitation. Psychological intervention strategies should focus on improving subjective social support and reducing inferiority feelings, particularly among vulnerable groups.

Keywords: anxiety; depression; disabilities; inferiority feelings; public mental health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mediating effect of inferiority feelings on the relationship between subjective social support and anxiety/depression symptoms. Regression coefficients are presented; a path: association between inferiority feelings (mediator variable) and subjective social support (independent variable) examined by logistic regression after adjusting for age, gender, educational level, marital status, job, family’s average monthly income, number of children, religious belief, and cohabitation status, degree of disability grade, time duration after physical disability, other disability comorbidities, daily travel, social interaction, internet use, objective social support and utilization of social support: c1/c2 path: association between anxiety/depression symptoms (dependent variable) and subjective social support (independent variable) examined by logistic regression after adjusting for age, gender, educational level, marital status, job, family’s average monthly income, number of children, religious belief, and cohabitation status, degree of disability grade, time duration after physical disability, other disability comorbidities, daily travel, social interaction, internet use, objective social support and utilization of social support; b1/b2 and c1’/c2’ path: association between anxiety/depression symptoms (dependent variable) and subjective social support (independent variable) and inferiority feelings (mediator variable) examined by logistic regression after adjusting for age, gender, educational level, marital status, job, family’s average monthly income, number of children, religious belief, and cohabitation status, degree of disability grade, time duration after physical disability grade, time duration after physical disability, other disability comorbidities, daily travel, social interaction, internet use, objective social support and utilization of social support; ***p < 0.001.
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Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the research project from China Disabled Persons’ Federation (grant no. 20&ZC015). However, the funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, report writing, or decision to submit the article for publication.