Objective  To explore relationships between social support, depression and safety risk among home-dwelling hypertension patients in rural areas for providing evidences for promoting home care safety of the patients.

  Methods  We conducted a questionnaire survey among 393 rural elderly (≥60 years old) home-dwelling hypertensives selected with multistage random cluster sampling in Laiwu municipality of Shandong province between October 2015 and March 2016. Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), 15-Item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) and Security Risk Assessment Questionnaire were used in the study.

  Results  Of the participants, 165 (41.98%) were identified with depression (mean GDS-15 score: 8.50 ± 2.40 ) and 301 (76.59%/393) were judged to have a general level of social support, with a mean score of 36.86 ± 5.25. For all the participants, the mean overall safety risk score was 111.92 ± 16.14 and the four dimension scores were 22.05 ± 5.47 for knowledge, 20.19 ± 5.27 for attitude , 53.18 ± 7.39 for behavior, and 16.15 ± 3.16 for social psychology, respectively. The results of Pearson correlation analysis demonstrated that depression and social support were significantly correlated with home care safety among the participants (r = 0.618 and r = – 0.418, both P < 0.05). Multivariate regression analysis revealed that influencing factors for the participants' home care safety included education level, alcohol drinking, body mass index (BMI), family monthly income, social support, and depression.

  Conclusion  The rural elderly hypertension patients with poor social support and depression have an increased home- dwelling safety risk.