Application of Social Support and Social Support Utilization for Chronic Diseases Patients Who Have Depression

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate application of social support and social support utilization for chronic diseases patients who have depression. Methods: 485 patients who were diagnosed as one of 6 chronic diseases, that include diabetes mellitus, stroke, coronary heart disease, malignant tumor, chronic kidney disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were invested to join our study. Their diagnosis of time is from January 2018 to July 2018, and they also suffered from depression during the follow-up period. We used the questionnaires to collect the information from patient, such as patient health questionnaire 9 (C-PHQ-9) which is base on Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Result：In all patient characteristics research, the incidence of depressive symptoms was 42.3%, it includes 101 cases of mild depression (49.3%), 62 cases of moderate depression (30.2%) and 42 cases of severe depression (20.5%). Some domains can influence depression in the life, they are education level, course of illness, monthly average medical expenses and self-care ability of patients with chronic depression and non-depression. In addition, some domains are statistical significance in the result, that include total score of social support utilization, perceived friend support, perceived other support, total score of perceived social support, perceived voluntary support, perceived professional support and perceived friendship support. Conclusion: The social support has strongly improvement to depression status of chronic diseases patients. Higher social support utilization improves the patients to better depression situation.