Alphonsus Chong's Personal Wiki

• 52 patients, 38 responded
• 60% trauma - others agenesis, vascular, tumor
• prosthesis fitted in about 1/3: the others: no benefit, low IQ, limb not functional
  • half still used them at follow up

> 1. The psychology of a patient did not seem to be modified grossly by the extent of the physical limitation suffered, or by the extent of possible rehabilitation. The most important factor in adaptation to disability seems to have been in reverse proportion to the amount of discrepancy existing between the ideal self and the one that actually existed. For example, an arm is less important to a man who visualizes his ideal self in function of his intelligence and feels less concerned about the integrity of his arm. On the contrary, rehabilitation might be poor in a “doer” who attributes great importance to his hands as tools.

2. In congenital defects, the body image did not include the absent limb, with the consequence that the subject had adapted to life without it and, if given a prosthesis, interpreted it as being too long or cumbersome. Previous reasonable adaptation was destroyed by the addition; shyness and self-consciousness set in, and in one case was conducive to severe neurotic depression in a boy of 17.

Chevrier, J. M., Gingras, G., Lemieux, R., Mongeau, M., Susset, V., & Voyer, R. (1956). Psycho-social and rehabilitative aspects of upper extremity amputees. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 75(10), 819–823.

• pinzur1994

• 2020-08-11 created