Definition
Chronic illness and disability profoundly impacts the lives of many individuals. For example, approximately one in five Americans has physical, sensory, psychiatric, or cognitive impairments that affect their daily activities. Psychosocial adaptation entails the integration of illness or disability into the individual’s life, identity, self-concept, and body image. Psychosocial adaptation is defined as the process in which a person with a disability moves from a state of disablement to a state of enablement and is characterized by the transformation from negative to positive well-being (Livneh & Antonak, 2005). Observed across disability groups, psychosocial adaptation occurs as the individual moves toward a state of optimal person-environment congruence. The final stage of psychosocial adaptation, known as adjustment, represents maximum congruence between the individual’s subjective...
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References and Readings
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Acknowledgments
The contents of this entry were developed with support through the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Effective Vocational Rehabilitation Service Delivery Practices (EBP-VR-RRTC) established at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Stout under a grant from the Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) grant number PR# H133B100034. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and endorsement by the Federal Government should not be assumed.
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Chan, F., da Silva Cardoso, E., Chronister, J., Hiatt, E. (2013). Psychosocial Adjustment. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_917
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