The Spinal Cord Injured Revisited: The Relationship Between Self-Blame, Other-Blame and Coping

Self-blame has been viewed as functional for victims' adjustment to negative life events. This perspective has been primarily based on the findings of Bulman and Wortman's 1977 study of the spinal cord injured. The present study replicates and extends the Bulman and Wortman study, using similar measures on a comparable sample and comparable life event. Patients did not differentiate among the concepts of responsibility, fault, and blame for the cause of the accident. Patients were behavioral rather than characterological self-blaming and alcohol use prior to the accident was the best predictor of self-blame. Attributions of responsibility for the cause of the event versus responsibility for rehabilitation (sequelae of the event) did not distinguish effective from ineffective copers. Bulman and Wortman's (1977) single-item measure of coping correlated with this study's multidimensional assessment of coping. There was no relationship between patients' attributions of self-blame and nurse's ratings of patients' coping but other-blame was associated with poorer coping.