Psychological Factors Affecting Living Organ Donors: A Study from Preoperative Stage

Organ transplant is the surgical process of removing an organ that cannot fulfill its function despite medical treatment and transplanting the corresponding organ from a donor to a recipient. Our study examined whether demographic variables such as sex, age, education status, or socioeconomic status and psychosocial variables including sensory processing sensitivity, attachment style, resilience, social support, and neuroticism predict depression, anxiety, and stress levels of living donors in the preoperative stage.

Data were collected from potential organ donors aged 18 to 60 years who voluntarily applied to the Ankara Bilkent City Hospital Organ Donation and Transplantation Center Unit. A total of 69 participants (21 kidney, 48 liver ) were included in the analyses.

According to the results, sex was the only demographic variable that significantly correlated with depression, anxiety, and stress, showing that female donors feel more depression, anxiety, and stress than male donors. According to regression analyses, the model including sex and other psychosocial variables was significant and explained 37 % of the variance for depression. Higher levels of resilience were linked with lower levels of depression. For anxiety, similarly, the model including sex and other psychosocial variables was significant and explained 33 % of the variance, that is, a higher level of resilience was associated with less anxiety. For stress, the model including sex and other psychosocial variables was significant and explained 40 % of the variance. In addition to resilience, which significantly predicted anxiety, neuroticism was a marginally significant predictor, that is, high resilience and low neuroticism predicted lower levels of anxiety.

The findings emphasize the importance of interventions to increase the psychological resilience of potential organ donors and show that psychological support, especially for female donors and donors with high levels of neuroticism, can improve the process.