Study: Sick Spouse Bad for Your Health

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Study: Sick Spouse Bad for Your Health

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By JEFF DONN

BOSTON (AP) - A husband or wife with a debilitating illness can

hasten your own death, a study suggests. The researchers blame the

stress and the loss of companionship, practical help, income and

other support that can occur when a spouse gets sick.

``You can die of a broken heart not just when a partner dies, but

when your partner falls ill,'' said chief researcher Dr.

Christakis at Harvard Medical School.

The study at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania was

published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The

research, backed by the National Institutes of Health, analyzed

Medicare records from a representative national sample of 518,240

elderly couples over nine years.

Past research has shown that the spouses of sick people face higher

risks of illness and death themselves - a phenomenon sometimes

called the ``caregiver burden'' or the ``bereavement effect.'' But

this study examined an extraordinarily large group of couples and

also quantified the risk associated with a range of illnesses.

It found that the risk is considerable: Men were 4.5 percent more

likely than usual to die on any given day after their wives were

hospitalized; women with sick husbands were almost 3 percent more

likely to die.

If the sick spouse dies, the partner's risk of death - whether from

accidents, suicide, infections or pre-existing conditions, such as

diabetes - shoots up fivefold, rising by 21 percent for men and 17

percent for women, the researchers said.

The partner's death risks were especially high in the six months

after the spouse was hospitalized for a severely disabling problem.

A spouse's hospitalization for stroke, heart attack, pneumonia and

hip fracture raised a male partner's death risk by 10 percent to 35

percent and a female partner's by 10 percent to 23 percent.

Hospitalization for dementia and psychiatric problems were

particularly bad, raising the risk of death 47 percent to 58 percent

for a male partner and 38 percent to 77 percent for a female

partner.

Older people were especially vulnerable to the effect.

``What it means to me is that people are interconnected, and so

their health is interconnected, and in really real ways, there can

be a kind of spread of disease between people,'' Christakis said.

On the other hand, most types of cancer did little or nothing to

raise the companion's risk of dying, apparently because so many

patients are able to function well between treatments, the

researchers said.

Schulz, a University of Pittsburgh psychologist who has

researched the same effect, generally endorsed the study's findings.

But he said it may not have fully accounted for the initial health

status of the partners with sick spouses.

The risk numbers for the sexes were not easily comparable, partly

because men tend to die sooner than women under normal

circumstances. However, the study hinted that men may be more

vulnerable than women to the death risk from a sick spouse.

That would fit with other research suggesting that men derive more

health benefits from marriage than women do.

Researchers and geriatric experts said the effects of a spouse's

illness on the partner should be taken into account by families,

social service workers, doctors and policymakers.

The researchers said the risk may apply not only to spouses, but

also to children and even close friends.

On the Net:

New England Journal of Medicine: http://nejm.org