Hopelessness and Social Support Level in The Inpatients and Factors Affecting Them

Purpose: This study was planned as a descriptive study to determine level of hopelessness and social support in the inpatients in Kars State Hospital, and the factors affecting them.

Method: The study sample consists of 93 patients hospitalized in the internal and surgical clinics of Kars State Hospital between October 2005-February 2006 who agreed to participate in the study. Data obtained by the questionnaire containing individual characteristics of the patient and information relating to the process of diagnosis and treatment, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and Perceived Social Support Scale were evaluated by SPSS program.Statistical evaluation was done with percent, mean ± standard deviation, Student’s t, Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis and Pearson Correlation tests.

Results: The patients’average score of Beck Hopelessness Scale is 8.76 ± 5.10 and their mean score of the Perceived Social Support Scale is 53.49 ± 21.31. It was found that marital status, education and working status, number of children and having the accompanying diseases affected the hopelessness score and that economic situation, the clinic type in which the patients were hospitalized affected the Perceived Social Support score.It was found that as age, the duration of disease and staying at the hospital increased, the hopelessness increased; as the duration of disease increased, perceived social support decreased and as the social support decreased, the hopelessness increased.

Conclusion: Having a low education level, a worse economic situation and more children increase the score of hopelessness. Having a better economic situation increases the perceived social support. It is observed that the hopelessness scores increases with the increasing ages; as the duration of disease and staying at the hospital increases, the hopelessness also increases; as the hopelessness and the duration of disease increase, the perceived social support score decreases.