ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1659691
The Impact of Social and Psychological Support on Patients with Varying Degrees of Severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Provisionally accepted
- 1910th Hospital of People's Liberation Army Joint Logistic Support Force, Quanzhou, China
- 2Second Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Quanzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective To investigate the effects of social support and psychological interventions on COPD patients across varying severity levels. Methods This prospective, randomized controlled study included 172 COPD patients from two hospitals between January 2021 and June 2024. Finally, 132 participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to an intervention group (n=66), receiving standard medical treatment plus systematic social and psychological support, or a control group (n=66), receiving standard treatment and routine health education. The intervention lasted for 12 months. Primary outcomes, including quality of life (SGRQ), mental health (HADS), exercise capacity (6MWT), dyspnea (MRC scale), and pulmonary function (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC), were assessed before and after the intervention. Results No significant baseline differences were observed. After 12 months, the intervention group showed significant improvements in SGRQ, HADS, and MRC scores (p < 0.05), 6MWT distance, and pulmonary function (p < 0.05). Mild and moderate COPD patients in the intervention group showed significant improvements in all outcomes compared to baseline and the control group (p < 0.05). Severe and very severe patients showed improvements in SGRQ and HADS scores (p < 0.05), but no changes in 6MWT or pulmonary function (p > 0.05). Conclusion Structured social and psychological interventions significantly improve quality of life, mental health, exercise capacity, and pulmonary function in mild to moderate COPD patients, but with limited effects on severe and very severe patients.
Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, social support, psychological support, Pulmonary Function, Quality of Life
Received: 04 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lian, Shi, Fengyu, Zhu and Lian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xihua Lian, xihua.lian@fjmu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.