Depression and perceived social support from family in Turkish patients with chronic renal failure treated by hemodialysis

BACKGROUND: Dialysis patients experience psychosocial problems, such as anxiety, depression, social isolation, loneliness, helplessness, and hopelessness. All of these psychosocial problems can increase patients’ need for holistic care, including attention to the person's environment and receiving support from family. If dialysis patients are better supported and cared for, these negative consequences might be prevented or at least decreased. This study was performed to determine the perceived social support from family and depression level of hemodialysis patients. METHODS: In this study, descriptive design was used. Data were collected during structured interviews in an outpatient clinic using a questionnaire. The questionnaire aimed to determine the patients’ descriptive characters and the scores of Beck Depression Inventory and Perceived Social Support from Family Scales. In data evaluation, descriptive statistics, Student's t tests, Kruskal Wallis tests, Mann-Whitney U tests and Pearson product moment correlations were used. RESULTS: The mean depression score was very high (23.2 ± 10.5). Significant differences were found between employment status and level of depressive symptoms. The mean level of perceived social support from family was 15.23 ± 5.37. There were no statistically significant differences between all the variables for the level of perceived social support from family. Perceived social support from family was negatively correlated with depression. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that Turkish hemodialysis patients experience depression. However, patients who were dissatisfied with their social relationships had higher depression scores.