Social supportThe Social Support Scale (SSS) consisted of 10 items (W. L. Lin et al., 2002) and was used to measure the level of support an individual received from his/her family, friends, or medical personnel. The possible supportive persons list in the SSS was identified by W. L. Lin et al. Due to some support resources being negative, Eggert et al. (1994) stated that measuring support should include both negative and positive directions. Thus SSS scores may range from 10 (unsupportive or unhelpful) to +10 (supportive or helpful) for each support person named during the past month. The range for SSS scores was 100 to +100. Expert validity of SSS was 4.69 (W. L. Lin et al., 2002). Cron-bach’s alpha was .68 in the current study.Demographic characteristicsDemographic characteristics included age, gender, marital status, education, employment status, household income, time since receiving transplant and kind of im-munosuppression