Introduction: Mental health plays an important role in palliative and supportive care. It can help elderly participate more meaningfully in their lives, including in decisions about their care. We aimed to investigate direct and stress-buffering associations between social support and the
mental health of
older people in Iran, a country which has recently undergone a rapid population ageing.Material and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among ۸۰۰ elderly over ۶۰ years old resident in Tehran using stratified random sampling method. For the first stage, three municipal districts of Tehran were chosen from areas of different socioeconomic status. For the second stage, one neighborhood from each district was randomly selected. The Social Provisions Scale and the General Health Questionnaire were used to measure perceived social support and mental health, respectively. Multilevel mixed-effects models were used to examine the hypotheses using STATA software.Results: Our results indicated that in general, women primarily relied on their children, while men primarily relied on their wives for most types of social support. The findings supported the hypothesis of a direct association between perceived and received social support and mental health. However, we did not find strong evidence to suggest that social support buffered the effects of stress arising from limitations of physical functioning. Lack of help doing paperwork was associated with worse
mental health for women but not men. Source of support did not seem to be important.Conclusions: Our results indicated that in Tehran, as in Western settings, social support is important for the mental well-being of elderly and consequently in palliative cares. Considering the strong association between
mental health and social support, early interventions to strengthen social support resources in old ages including developing age friendly cities, tackling health inequity and promoting social systems and social activities of elderly are necessary.