Investigating the Relationship between Primary Distress and Social Support with Secondary Distress among Married Nurses Employed by Edu-Medical Centers of Isfahan City

Optimal performance of individuals depends on meeting their psychological needs. Failure to meet the primary needs of couples causes primary disturbance and primary distress in turn provides the basis for secondary distress, hence the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Primary Distress and Social Support with secondary distress in nurses who work in Educational-Health centers Isfahan city.

The present study is descriptive–correlational study that 171 married nurses from educational and medical centers in Isfahan were selected by simple random sampling. Psychological needs and Self-actualization questionnaires were used to collect data related to primary Distress, marital adjustment questionnaire was used for data related to secondary Distress, and social support questionnaire was used for data related to social support. Mean and standard deviation were used to describe the data and Pearson correlation and stepwise multiple regression were used for inferential analysis.

The results showed that a meaningful relationship between primary distress, social support, and secondary distress (P < 0.001). In the next step, stepwise multiple regression showed that the primary distress predicted 45.5% of the variance of the secondary distress (P < 0.001), and finally, with the social support of all variables, 46% the variance predicts secondary distress (P < 0.001).

The results indicate the importance of attention to the variables of primary distress and social support with secondary distress in married life, so paying attention to these variables as an obstacle to the tendency to divorce and increasing marital satisfaction is important.