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I have a few questions. Let's say someone get's a medical diagnosis, for instance, someone has a particular type of cancer and is told they have a 60% chance of survival. Now, I'm assuming that number is some sort of static of the percentage of the survivors who have had that particular type of cancer, correct? And is that figure adjusted for things like age, size of tumor, location of tumor, and other things that I have no idea if they are relevant, but if they are: sex, race, etc...So is that the case?
Now, what about situations where someone has some sort of spinal injury and they're told they have a 10% of walking again? Assuming I've got the right story above of that figure just being a frequency of past occurrances, are there other factors that can go into something like walking again? Like the persons body type or build or other physical differences outside of the type of injury suffered. But what I'm really curious about is the role of psychological factors in this sort of recovery. What kind of difference does it make when one person doesn't have a supportive social network and is also not the kind of person who is motivated to overcome obstacles and doesn't have a drive to succeed, and someone who does have those things.
Now, I realize incorporating that into a statistic is practically impossible. You couldn't do a psychological profile of each individual and incorporate that into their diagnosis, and that's even assuming the psychological profile would be an accurate predictor of their motivation and determination to walk. And I also don't mean to imply that the only difference between those that walk again and those that don't is psychological factors. Even if everyone had the full amount of determination, I'm sure physical factors constrain that possibility. I'm just curious how large of a factor that psychological aspect plays.
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