Sarah Harcourt Thewlis 

The objective of this study was to recruit participants who identified as disabled or living with a chronic illness and to examine if there was a significant difference in participants stress, resilience and positive mental health scores according to the grouping level of social support, individuals who participated in an online social support group compared to those who did not. An online convenience sampling method was employed for recruitment, with the use of four questionnaires to measure the variables in this study, the Wellbeing Index -WHO-5 (WHO, 1998), the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) (Smith et al., 2008), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1994) and the Medical Outcome Study Social Support Survey (MOS) (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1993). Two research questions were posed, will engagement in an online support group for individuals living with disabilities and chronic illness affect one’s stress, resilience, and positive mental health and will there be a significant difference between stress, resilience and positive mental health. While 5 hypothesis were posed, that there will be a difference for participants stress, resilience and positive mental health scores based on engagement in an online support group, that there will be a difference for participants stress and resilience scores based on positive mental health (low, medium, high) and finally that there will be a difference for participants stress scores based on resilience (low, medium, high).

The first three hypotheses were rejected due to lack of significant difference, however hypothesis four and five were accepted. The significant finding that positive mental health has a significant impact on stress and resilience and that resilience has a significant impact on stress, adds to current knowledge in literature. Furthermore, such findings support the continued investigation of this research topic having highlighted the importance of psychological interventions in the treatment of DCI. However, as online social support was found to have no significant impact on stress, resilience and positive mental health, such findings, although not all significant, have aided in addressing the gap in literature in this topic. It must also be noted that such insignificant findings may have occurred due to limitations of this study. The possible implications of covid-19 restrictions on data collection and the negative implications of living through a pandemic were not accounted for as a confounding variable. Future research in this area, if it were to occur during the pandemic, would benefit by taking this into account. Finally, a strength of this study was the unrestricting of health conditions during recruitment was used in an effort to recruit a diverse range of participants with the aim to be representative of the DCI population as a whole.