Relationships of social support and attitudes towards death: A mediator role of depression in older patients on haemodialysis

Abstract

The incidence and prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in Taiwan ranks first in the world (Wang et al., 2018). The severity of the problem can be reflected in particularly high kidney dialysis population which is 1.6-1.8 times that of Japan and Korea, and the highest proportions of ESRD expenditure with respect to their national health insurance systems (Ismail et al., 2019; US Renal Data System, USRDS, 2017). In addition, according to the prediction by Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (Perkovic et al., 2016), by 2040, 642 million people will be diagnosed patients of chronic kidney disease (CKD), and 40% among them will be diabetic patients, including patients with ESRD. Therefore, the functional health maintenance and post-illness treatment of kidney function as well as end-of-life care have become an important global health issue.In the past, research on ESRD mainly explored the long-term symptoms of haemodialysis and the impact of the disease process on daily life, such as the issues of gradual ageing of dialysis patients, degradation of their physical function, role change and decreased self-care ability (Chen & Fang, 2012). However, most of these studies focused on physiological symptoms, such as fatigue (Bai et al., 2015) and sleep disorders (Khan et al., 2019). Despite the rise of hospice palliative care in recent years, the end-of-life care of this group should also be given due attention (Chen et al., 2011;Yang et al., 2012). However, the existing research lacks the discussion of the attitudes of haemodialysis patients towards death because of

Influencing factors of attitudes towards death and demands for death education among community-dwelling Chinese older adults: a cross-sectional study

“…The Korean older adults have a slightly positive attitude towards death, which is consistent with the results of this study [ 36 ]. In this study, the score of neutral acceptance of death among the older adults was the highest, but still lower than positive attitude towards death (3.45 ± 0.58) among the older adults in Taiwan, China [ 37 ]. The results of this study showed that the attitude towards death in the study participants was neutral acceptance of death mainly.…”