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Social Support and Depression After Cardiac Surgery in Elderly Patients

From the Departments of Psychiatry, Community and Family Medicine, and Internal Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School; and the Department of Biostatistics, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. Address correspondence to Dr. Oxman at the Department of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, One Medical Center Drive, Lebanon, NH 03756.

Two methods of measuring social support components were compared for their ability to predict depression 6 months after cardiac surgery in older patients (N = 155). Multiple regression models were used to compare summary support measures with subtype measures. A personality inventory was also included to rule out the possibility that significant findings about relationships of depression and social support were due primarily to personality dimensions. In the summary model, only the number of network members seen regularly was associated with less depression. In the subtype model, the number of relatives seen regularly and perceived adequacy of support from friends were associated with less depression, whereas receipt of tangible support was associated with more. When examined together with personality dimensions, both the summary components and subtypes of components of social support were better predictors of depressive symptomatology than the personality dimensions. The results helped confirm the importance of social support factors to the occurrence of depression in elderly patients and suggested that measures of social support subtypes were more informative than summary measures of social support.