Acceso usuarios
This study examined the relationship between the theme of interdependence in the narratives of American adults with disabilities and psychological well-being across the shifting conditions of the first 3 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to independence, interdependence has emerged as a focus of research about people with disabilities in both the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and in prior psychological research. In the present study, 108 participants completed questionnaires assessing well-being and responded to three narrative prompts once a year between 2020 and 2022, resulting in a total of 952 narratives. Narratives were reliably coded for the theme of interdependence in addition to the themes of independence, dependence, agency, submissiveness, communion, and disconnection. The results of multilevel modeling analyses indicated that the themes of interdependence and disconnection were most strongly associated with psychological well-being over the changing contexts of the study. Within-person analyses indicated that higher levels of interdependence were associated with lower levels of well-being in 2020 and with higher levels of well-being in 2022. These results suggest that the associations between narrative themes and well-being are contextualized and may demonstrate unusual associations during extreme events, like the COVID-19 pandemic. This study quantitatively establishes interdependence as an important narrative theme, one especially salient for people with disabilities. Additionally, the findings suggest that people with disabilities may offer alternative ways of narrating contemporary American identity that center interdependence, rather than independence, and challenge culturally shared notions about how to be American. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
