Psychological Evaluation in Spinal Cord Injury

This chapter aims to describe and evaluate the assessment tools to evaluate psychological aspects in people with SCI through a systematic review of scientific literature. The systematic review was conducted in line with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) on Pubmed, Scopus, Cinahl, and Web of Science. After removing duplicates, 3333 papers were screened, and of these, 476 were included in this systematic review. Among these, 64 papers were considered for this chapter. Results show 46 assessment tools that evaluate the psychological area of persons with SCI. Among these, most scales evaluate the aspect of anxiety and depression, self-efficacy, and coping strategies. The most common assessment tools are the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), which is a self-report measure that asks subjects how often they have been bothered by the problems such as feeling depressed, feeling tired, poor appetite, feelings of guilt, or thoughts of suicide; the Spinal Cord Lesion Related Coping Strategies Questionnaire (SCL-CSQ), which is a specific scale developed to evaluate the coping strategies of persons with SCI; and, the Spinal Cord Injury–Falls Concern Scale (SCI-FCS), which is a scale that assesses the degree of attention, with respect to falls in a wheelchair, by people with SCI while they carry out daily activities.