Effects of offspring-related characteristics on depressive disorder among cancer patients and survivors

Objective: To investigate the influence of offspring-related characteristics on the prevalence of depressive disorders among cancer patients and those who survived cancer for at least 45 years. Materials and Methods: Data were obtained from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). To investigate the association between offspring and depressive disorder among cancer patients and survivors, we analyzed data from 292 cancer patients and survivors drawn from a total subject pool of 16,613 individuals at baseline. Results: According to our results, the odds ratio (OR) for subjects with five or more offspring developing depressive disorder was -0.794 (p-value: 0.039, SE: 0.329) compared with that of those with two offspring. In addition, the adjusted effect of the number of male and female offspring on the presence of depressive disorder showed that the OR for those with three or more female offspring for developing depressive disorder was -0.958 lower (SE: 0.305, p-value: 0.012) than it was for those with no female offspring. Conclusions: This article provides evidence for an association between offspring-related characteristics and depressive disorders among cancer patients and survivors. Therefore, offspring may be important contributors to the emotional status of cancer patients and survivors. Further study should precisely need to measure depressive disorders because of self-reported data.