ackground and Objectives

This study was designed to compare motives and psycho-somatic effects of blood donation between Tehran and Mahabad as two different cities on culture and socio-economic status.

Materials and Methods

This cross-sectional study was done in Winter of 2014 on 258 blood donors: 123 in Tehran and 135 in Mahabad. Some days were selected randomly for the donors to be asssessed on those days. The questionnaire contained 44 questions. We used descriptive statistics, mean comparison tests and chi-square using SPSS version 18 to analyze the data.

Results

In this study, 242 men (93.8%) and 16 females (6.2%) participated. The motives for blood donation were altruism (Tehran and Mahabad 93% and 80%, respectively), positive effects on health (Tehran and Mahabad 66% and 80%, respectively), and the health evaluation of blood donors (Tehran and Mahabad 52% and 69%, respectively). Among the short term effects, being useful, alertness, mental peace, and happiness and among the long term effects, the work efficiency, health improvement, and stress reduction had a higher frequency; 6.4% of donors reported negative effects such as loss of work efficiency as an impediment to blood donation.

Conclusions

The main motivation of blood donation was altruism and positive effects of blood donation with the recent impetus asssessed to be higher in Mahabad than Tehran. Most reported effects were mind relaxation, consciousness, happiness, and good feelings with greater frequency in Mahabad than in Tehran.