Level of depression in the main caregiver of patients with cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Introduction: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and frequently generates situations of dependency and care for others; the impact on the patient’s primary caregiver has been barely studied.

Objective: To determine the level of depression in the patient’s primary caregiver with cancer in a service of oncology of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social.

Methodology: It was carried out a survey with 108 caregivers of patients with cancer and 108 relatives (of these patients) through the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. For the statistical analysis we used the Windows package SSPS, version 18. Descriptive statistics were used to estimate the frequency of cases with and without depression. To analyze the difference between groups, we used Chi-squared test and the relative risk (RR) associated to depression was calculated when the caregiver was relative of a cancer patient.

Results: In the group of caregivers of patients with cancer 13.3 % had mild depression; in the control group, 18.6 % had mild depression and 0.9 % moderate depression. We did not found a difference between groups (p = 0.519). The RR was 0.6 (95 % C : 0.125-2.87).

Conclusions: In both groups we found a higher frequency than the prevalence of depression (of 9.2  %) in Mexico. The frequency of depressive symptoms was higher in the control group, probably because family members of cancer patients manage to find something positive in the act of caregiving.