To improve psychological care among middle-aged and older patients with breast cancer in China, more information is needed on social capital, posttraumatic growth (PTG), and depression among breast cancer patients in China. To identify the relationships among social capital, PTG, and depression among middle-aged and older patients with breast cancer and determine whether PTG statistically accounts for the indirect association between social capital and depression. This cross-sectional study was conducted between January and September 2023. The individual social capital scale, 21-item Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, and 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire were used to assess the social capital, PTG, and depression of the participants, respectively, using the sociodemographic and disease-related data provided by the participants. The bootstrap method was used to estimate the indirect association through PTG using IBM SPSS Amos Statistics 26. Depression was significantly and negatively correlated with social capital (p .05), while the indirect association via PTG remained statistically significant (effect = − 0.054; 95%CI: − 0.100 to − 0.014), indicating an indirect-only mediation pattern in which the association between social capital and depression was statistically explained by the indirect pathway through PTG. The findings suggest that although social capital was not directly associated with depression among middle-aged and older patients with breast cancer, its association with reduced depression was observed through the statistical mediation of PTG. These results provide preliminary evidence for the importance of prioritizing the mental health care for breast cancer patients in China, and underscore the need for targeted intervention strategies that enhance social capital and PTG in concert, as PTG represents a potential intermediary pathway that is associated with the link between social resources and reduced depressive symptoms.
Su et al. (Thu,) studied this question.