Relationships of social support and attitudes towards death: A mediator role of depression in older patients on haemodialysis

AIM: To explore the mediating role of depression in older people receiving haemodialysis on social support and the attitude of participants towards death. DESIGN: A cross‐sectional questionnaire survey. METHODS: Data were collected from older people undergoing dialysis (N = 209) at two regional hospitals in the north of Taiwan. Confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation model was used to clarify the strength of relationships and intermediary effects of three scales in which with 5,000 bootstrap samples using LISREL 9.31. RESULTS: The final model provided a good fit for the data. Social support and depression have statistically significant effects on dialysis older person' negative death attitudes. The direct effect of social support on depression was the strongest (p<.001). Overall, depression completely mediates social support and positive death attitudes. Depression partially mediates social support and negative death attitude.