Tools
Tools
Steele, Victoria (2025) How adolescents who underwent surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis experienced their mental health and body image, an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
Background
Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) is a curvature in the spine with no known cause (Scoliosis Support and Research [SSR], 2024), diagnosed aged 10-19, with the worst cases commonly treated with spinal fusion surgery. The experience of AIS surgery has been explored revealing psychological difficulties and body image concerns in some adolescents pre- and post operatively (Motyer et al., 2022; Rullander et al., 2013). Prior quantitative research has shown that those with AIS could be at risk for depression and social anxiety (Baird & Gardner, 2021) and have poorer body image than controls, though body image scores improved post-operatively (Roberts et al., 2011). Following quantitative research identifying mental health and body image as the domains adolescents struggled with most, and qualitative research highlighting further exploration of psychological difficulties, asking adolescents specifically about their mental health was deemed important.
Rationale and Aims
This research aims to explore the psychological experience of adolescents who had AIS spinal fusion surgery, asking how they experienced their mental health and body image pre- and post-operatively.
Method
Data was collected via six semi-structured interviews with female adolescents who had undergone AIS surgery. A qualitative methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, was used to analyse the lived experiences of participants.
Findings and Conclusions
Four Group Experiential Themes emerged from the analysis: Disrupted Belonging and The Search for Normality, Protecting Self in a Social World, Psychological Turmoil and Emotional Disruption, and Emerging Selfhood and Acceptance.
Psychological consequences of AIS appeared tethered to the ability to belong, rather than the experience of major surgery. Participants concealed and sacrificed their physical wellbeing to avoid the psychological implications of not fitting in socially.
Findings revealed surgery does not remove self-consciousness and worries about body image. Concerns and thoughts changed pre- and post operatively but were not eradicated.
This research illuminated the importance of the social world to adolescents, and how AIS risks that. Implications included providing support for adolescents to allow them space to belong and acknowledge surgery does not and cannot ‘fix’ everything.
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