2025/06/13 by Raquel Sánchez‐Recio, Bárbara Oliván‐Blázquez, Fátima Méndez-López +18 · 3 voices
Health Professions · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Aging, Health, and Disability #Health and Lifestyle Studies #Health disparities and outcomes
paper · pdf · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1540530
openalex publication_date 2025/06/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Background The positive relationship between health and good perceived social support has been widely demonstrated in the scientific literature. It is known that having a good social support influences the proper maintenance of health even as a protective factor, besides being a good predictor in the recovery of health during a disease process, influencing differently men and women. Aim This project aims to study the moderating effects of perceived social support in the relationship between depression and self-perceived health according to gender, after a complex multiple-risk intervention was carried out in patients of primary health care with low social support. Methods A cluster randomized clinical trial was developed in the subgroup of patients included in phase 3 of the EIRA project. CONSORT recommendations were followed to present the results. To determine the mediating effect between social support and self-perceived health, three regression analyses were carried out using the procedure designed by Hayes through the PROCESS macro for SPSS. Results 3,062 people (54.9% women) participated in the study. Men reported experiencing more social support and self-perceived health ( p < 0.001) than women at the beginning of the study, but women reported higher social support at post-intervention. Moderation analyses showed that, post-intervention, those women ( b simple = −2.9867, p < 0.001) and males ( b simple = −1.4337, p < 0.001) who scored lower in depression reported higher social support. Conclusion In primary care, it is necessary to encourage intervention strategies that promote social networks as a key element of positive action aimed at maintaining and improving the population’s health, especially in adults and more specifically in women. Clinical trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov , identifier NCT03136211.