Social support, social disability and their role as predictors of depression among patients with congestive heart failure.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of social support variables, personality, clinical variables (New York Heart Associations classification), and social disability upon depression. The sample consisted of 119 clinically stable patients (34 females, 85 males) with symptomatic heart failure, recruited from an outpatient hospital practice. The patients underwent a brief physical examination and completed a set of questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to characterise the patients' informal functional network. The analysis revealed that the intimate social network support (spouses) and primary social network support (close family) were rated as most supportive. Results from the path analysis showed that social disability was explained by the two personality factors, neuroticism and extraversion, and by the severity of disease (NYHA). No significant effects of the social support variables upon social disability were detected. Moreover, path-analyses showed that poor intimate network support, social disability and neuroticism were significantly positively associated with depression.