Independence and Locus Of Control.
One thing that is of the utmost importance to any person regardless of their life circumstances is their independence and their sense of control.
It may be over 15 years since I learnt about how a person’s sense of control of events, objects and activities impacts a person’s health and wellbeing but I use it every day with my participants to create meaningful goals, implement purposeful Physiotherapy sessions and improve their overall wellbeing.
The concepts that spoke most to me were that of Locus of Control and Self-Efficacy. The term ‘Locus of Control’ refers to an individual's perception about the underlying main causes of events in his/her life. To simplify it – those with Internal Locus of Control believe that they are responsible for their own success and those with an external Locus of Control believe that external forces, like luck or other people determine the outcomes. ‘Self-Efficacy’ is related and refers to an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviours necessary to produce specific performance attainments. Self-Efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behaviour, and social environment.
Without going into specifics, in a study by 1977 Rodin and Langer they looked at the effect of choice and enhanced responsibility on older adults. They looked at two groups of older adults, where one group was told they could arrange their furniture as they wanted, go where they wanted, spend time with whom they wanted, and so forth and were given a plant to care for; the other group was told that the staff was there to take care of and help them, including watering a plant given to each of them. Overall they found that those who had increased choice and self-control improved their health and wellbeing compared to those who did not have choice and self-control.
The one thing that stuck out to me was that something as small as being able to care and water your own plant could improve the health and well-being of someone. Till this day, I still think and implement this with my participants. Together with the participant, we work out meaningful goals, and in small steps we move towards these goals – whether it’s the ability to hang clothes on the line (because they smell better that way), be able to have the range of motion to scratch that itch on their head, walk to the mailbox to collect their mail or to have the strength to lift up the watering can to water their plant.
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