Relationship between primary caregivers’ social support function, anxiety, and depression after interventional therapy for acute myocardial infarction patients

Abstract

BACKGROUND An acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is often treated with direct coronary intervention and requires home-based rehabilitation. Caregivers of patients with AMI need adequate social support to maintain high-quality care; however, their social support function is low, and relevant indicators for intervention must be identified. AIM To analyze the correlation between social support for primary caregivers, their anxiety, and depression, when caring for patients with AMI after interventional therapy. METHODS Using convenience sampling, we selected 300 primary caregivers of patients with AMI who had undergone interventional therapy. The Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were used to assess the primary caregivers. A Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlations between the SSRS, SAS, and SDS, and a multiple logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the factors influencing the low social support function of primary caregivers. The receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used to evaluate the pre-dictive ability of the SAS and SDS for low social support function in primary caregivers. RESULTS Considering the norm among Chinese people, AMI caregivers’ objective support, subjective support, support utilization, and SSRS scores were lower, while their SAS and SDS scores were higher. The SSRS scores of female caregivers were higher than those of the male caregivers (t = 2.123, P = 0.035). The Pearson correlation analysis showed that objective support, subjective support, support utilization, and SSRS total scores were significantly correlated with both SAS (r = -0.414, -0.460, -0.416, -0.535) and SDS scores (r = -0.463, -0.379, -0.349, -0.472). Among the 300 AMI caregivers, 56 cases (18.67%) had a low level of support function (SSRS ≤ 22 points). Logistic regression model analysis showed that SAS and SDS were independent risk factors for low social support function of AMI caregivers, regardless of adjustment for other variables (P < 0.05). SAS and SDS predicted that the AUC of AMI caregivers with low support function was 0.84, sensitivity was 67.9 and 71.4, and specificity was 84.0 and 70.9, respectively. CONCLUSION The social support function of the primary caregiver of patients with AMI after interventional therapy was lower and negatively correlated with anxiety and depression in the primary caregiver.