Levels of depression, anxiety and quality-of-life of kidney and liver donors in a university hospital in Ankara

Objective: The psychosocial assessments of live kidney and liver donor candidates constitutes an important issue whereas many studies has drawn attention to the donation's correlation with anxiety and depression as well as the unwanted psychosocial outcomes. There are studies that find psychiatric disorders that appear in the post-operative period after donation lower or higher compared to the normal population. Altruism is considered as a concept that ensures vital stress management and is defined as 'the degree of obligation felt in situations where you are supposed to help others'. It is believed that altruistic behavior is a mature defense mechanism, which prevents the development of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorder and depression and protects the individual against those psychiatric disorders. Methods: Our study included 51 participants who were donors of kidney and liver at Ankara Hospital of Baskent University between the years 2016 and 2017, and who accepted to participate in the study. The participants were given the Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, SF-36 Quality-of-Life Scale and a Sociodemographic Questionnaire. Results: When the donors who participated in the study were compared with the Turkish society standards, the patient group was found to obtain significantly higher scores than the society average in the quality-of-life subscales 'physical function', 'difficulty in physical role', 'mental health' and 'pain', therefore, they were found to have a higher quality-of-life. Among the donors who participated in our study, the rate of those with moderate to severe depression was found to be 3.9% and of those with moderate to severe anxiety was found to be 'zero'. Discussion: Organ donation may be an altruistic behavior acting as a defensive mechanism that protects the individual against mental disorders such as depression and anxiety and increasing the quality-of-life.