Gathering Information: Learning More about PATIENTs’ Social Support

Illness may prohibit individuals from having access to their support system or being able to socialize in their usual way. When people are in pain, they often withdraw from others in order to conserve inner resources and physical energy, and they may not ask for the help that they need. Clinicians can inquire about each person’s current social support resources and help them to pinpoint where there is a need for additional support and to identify how it might be met.

After a clinician has reviewed answers to questions about family, friends, and co-workers from the PHI, other questions can take the conversation about relationships and social supports deeper.  As noted earlier, social support has three dimensions, and all of them are important.  Consider asking about all three:

1. Who provides you with support?
2. How satisfied are you with the support? A negative relationship may be worse than no relationship at all.
3. What types of support do you receive? Social support can be emotional or instrumental (i.e., involves receiving labor, time, or funding from others). It may also involve receiving mentoring (feedback) or information.

The Social Support Questionnaire, developed in 1983, contains 27 questions that can be used to gather more information about social support – who provides it, the type of support a person receives, and how satisfied a person is with that support.¹ If individuals are not “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied,” it is worth exploring their answers in more depth, if possible. The following questions are from the six-item short version of that questionnaire.²

1. Whom can you really count on to be dependable when you need help?
2. Whom can you really count on to help you feel more relaxed when you are under pressure or tense?
3. Who accepts you totally, including both your worst and your best points?
4. Whom can you really count on to care about you, regardless of what is happening to you?
5. Whom can you really count on to help you feel better when you are feeling generally down-in-the-dumps?
6. Whom can you count on to console you when you are very upset?

And here are some other key questions you can consider:

• Which relationships fulfill and/or strengthen you?