Depressive symptoms and their associated factors in heart failure patients
Abstract
Objectives
Depressive symptoms are common in heart failure (HF) patients and they may exacerbate the progression of HF. Thus, identifying associations with depressive symptoms is essential to develop effective interventions to alleviate patients’ depressive symptoms. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the factors related to HF patients’ depressive symptoms.
Methods
Potential hospitalized patients were recruited from a university-affiliated hospital by convenience sampling. This study included 321 HF patients who had completed information about depressive symptoms, functional capacity, social support, dispositional optimism, self-care confidence, and health literacy. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the sample. Independent group t-tests and one-way analysis of variance were used to assess the difference in depressive symptoms score in demographic and clinical characteristics, while Pearson's correlation was used to assess the associations among continuous variables.
Results
The scores for functional capacity, social support, dispositional optimism, self-care confidence, and health literacy were negatively associated with the score for depressive symptoms. The interaction effect between the functional capacity and the dispositional optimism on depressive symptoms was significant.
Conclusions
Interventions targeted improving the above-mentioned factors may be beneficial to reduce depressive symptoms in HF patients.
© 2021 Deng-Xin He, Ming-Hao Pan, published by Shanxi Medical Periodical Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.