Associations between personal social network properties and mental health in cancer care

In this study, we develop a theoretical model based on social network theories and the quality of life (QOL) model to understand how social support would influence Global Mental QOL in the context of cancer patients. While extant literature showing how structural, dyadic and network level perspectives influence QOL remain lacking, this study contributes towards addressing this gap. It also illustrates how social network data, which is primarily time consuming to obtain, can be extracted from current social surveys. Using the U.S. National Health Interview Survey 2010, we (i) demonstrate how relational data is extracted for (ii) investigating the association between egocentric network properties (structure, position and relations) and Global Mental QOL. Results show that there are significant differences in the network properties (density, degree, tie strength, efficiency and constraint) of those experiencing good and poor Global Mental QOL. These findings are critical to influencing interventions and policy development for enhanced Mental QOL in cancer care.