The diagnosis of cancer is often associated with a host of negative emotional responses, including depressed mood. Social support and quality of life were used to predict depression in a sample of older male cancer patients. Depression was found to be a common, but not universal, reaction to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Almost 40% of subjects reported symptoms of moderate depression and nearly one fifth produced scores indicative of clinical depression. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that our social support and quality of life measures accounted for 31.5% of the variance in total Beck Depression Inventory scores. Quality of life accounted for more of the variance in depression than did social support.
