Background and aims: Patients suffer from chronic diseases such as hemodialysis patients may experience mental disturbances, social isolation, loneliness, helplessness, and hopelessness. It can lead to decrease quality of life and increase their need to continuing care especially receiving social support. The present study was aimed to investigate the relationship between anxiety, depression, and perceived social support, in one hand, and quality of life, in the other hand, among hemodialysis patients.
Methods: This study was a descriptive research with a correlational design that was carried out in Sina hospital in Tehran. 84 hemodialysis patients were randomly selected via randomized sampling from. The respondents filled out Zimet et al.’s Perceived Social Support Scale, Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale, and Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form (KDQOL-SF). Data were analyzed using SPSS, descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation, and inferential tests including Pearson Product Moment Correlation, One-Way ANOVA, and Independent Samples t-test.
Results: The results indicated that the life quality of hemodialysis patients was low (46.90±12.56), and anxiety (10±3.22) and their depression (9.53±3.25) were high. Moreover, there was a statistically significant direct relationship between their perceived social support (r=-0.34, P<0.01) and their quality of life and a statistically significant indirect relationship between their anxiety (r=-0.51, P<0.01) and depression (r=-0.54, P<0.01) amount and their quality of life.
Conclusion: The findings imply that the life quality of hemodialysis patients could be improved by increasing social support, enhancing the quality of care offered by nurses and the patients’ families, and also early screening of anxiety and depression among hemodialysis patients in order to develop necessary interventions.