The Associations Between Demographic Characteristics and Depressionin Hemodialysis Patients

Introduction: Dialysis is a stressful process with several psychological and social problems that can lead to the expression of psychological disorders in patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationshipsbetween the demographic variables and depression among the dialysis patients. Methods: The present study is across-sectional observation that involved all of the patients in hemodialysis centerof Shahid Mohammadi hospital of Bandar Abbas in 2012. One hundred fourteen patients were selected based on the statistical methods.Beckrs depression inventory (BDI) with 21 questions was used to collect the data. Statistics SPSS 19 software for Windows was used for the statistical analyses. A two sided a = 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Correspondence: Ali Akbar Hesam, MSc Student. Hormozgan of Fertility and Inferility Research Center, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences. Bandar Abbas, Iran. Tel:+98 76 33337104 Email: aliakbar.hesam@yahoo.com Results: About 57.9 of the samples were males and 42.1 were females and 74.4 were single and 52.6 were married. Significant correlation (P<0.01) was found between the variables of sex, age, marital status, level of education, and income level with depression. The results showed that there was a higher depression among female patients than the male ones and also in singles compared to married patients. Concerning the income variable it was found that those with lower incomes were suffering more from depression. Conclusion: Our findings support the importance of demographic characteristics to determine the prevalence of depression in hemodialysis patients. Among demographic variables, sex, age, marital status, level of education, and income level were the most important predictors.