Social support and its effective factors in the Afghan immigrants in Savojbolagh County in 2012

Foreign immigrants form the part of the population of each country. Among the foreign immigrant population in Iran, The share of immigrants and nationals from Afghanistan is very noticeable. One of the factors that affect this people's physical and mental health is social support. This study aimed to investigate the status of social support and its effective factors on afghan immigrants were performed. This cross-sectional study of 400 cases of Afghan immigrants was carried out in Savojbolagh County in 1391. For collecting the survey data, the Questionnaires of demographic and Vaux's social support have been used. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and correlation, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests, by SPSS18 software. The study cases were 231 men (57.7%) and 169 women (42.3%). Total average age of immigrants is 54.8 ±01.26, the average age for men is 54.7 ± 58.24 and for women is 42.9 ± 96.27. The average score of Social support was higher in women than men. Between social support and gender, education, job satisfaction, economic status, chronic disease, and residence status, a statistically significant relationship was found (P<0.05). However, the statistically significant relationship between social support and place of birth was not observed (P>0.05). According to the findings of this study, different individual and environmental factors can be effective in the social support of migrants. Also social support status of Afghan immigrants is moderate, so the need to provide informational, emotional, and instrumental support for enhancing the social support status in them is tangible.