Older People Who Care for Disabled Spouse May Add
Years to Their Own Lives
Previous studies show negative health effects of caregiving.
But current results show difference in the presumed stress of providing
help from the stress of witnessing a loved one suffer
Dec. 1, 2008 – Much has been written about the
burden of carrying for a spouse or loved one but a new study has
encouraging news - older people who spent at least 14 hours a week
taking care of a disabled spouse lived longer than others.
That is the unexpected finding of a University of
Michigan study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of
the Association for Psychological Science.
The study supports earlier research showing that in
terms of health and longevity, it really is better to give than to
receive.
"These findings suggest that caregivers may
actually benefit from providing care under some circumstances," said U-M
researcher Stephanie Brown, lead author of the study report.
"Previous studies have documented negative health
effects of caregiving. But the current results show that it is time to
disentangle the presumed stress of providing help from the stress of
witnessing a loved one suffer."
Brown is an assistant professor of internal
medicine at the U-M Medical School and a faculty associate at the U-M
Institute for Social Research (ISR). She is also affiliated with the Ann
Arbor Veterans Affairs Hospital.
For the study, Brown and colleagues reviewed seven
years of data from the U-M Health and Retirement Study, a nationally
representative sample of Americans age 70 and older. The analysis
focused on 1,688 couples, all of whom lived on their own.
At the start of the study in 1993, both members of
each couple reported how much help they received from their spouse with
a long list of everyday activities. These included eating, dressing and
bathing, preparing meals, managing money and taking medications.
The vast majority—approximately 81 percent—said
they received no help at all from their spouse. Another nine percent
reported getting less than 14 hours of help a week, and the remaining
ten percent reported getting 14 hours of help or more each week.
Over the course of the study, 909 people died—about
27 percent of the study population. After controlling for health, age,
race, gender, education, employment status and net worth, Brown and
colleagues found that the individuals who provided at least 14 hours of
care a week to their spouses were significantly less likely to have died
during the study period than those who provided no spousal care.
The results of this study add to a growing
literature on the positive, beneficial health effects of caregiving,
helping and altruism, according to Brown. Her own earlier work has shown
that providing social support to friends, relatives and neighbors has a
beneficial impact on mortality and on coping with spousal loss.
Brown has a theory about why this is the case.
Rather than assuming that humans are selfish and necessarily act only on
the basis of rational self-interest, she believes that strong
evolutionary forces favor altruistic motivation when individuals are
interdependent.
"There is growing recognition that economic
decisions may be influenced by complex motivations, not limited to
self-interest," she said. "We don't know yet exactly how caregiving
motivation and behavior might influence health, but it could be that
helping another person—especially someone you love—relieves some of the
harmful stress effects of seeing that person suffer."
With support from the National Science Foundation,
Brown will examine how altruistic, helpful behavior, including
caregiving, enhances well-being. Starting in 2009, this research will
focus on the neuro-affective mechanisms of helping behavior.
The ISR Health and Retirement Study is funded by
the National Institute on Aging.
Established in 1949, the University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest academic
survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and
application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most
widely cited studies in the nation, including the Reuters/University of
Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies,
the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the
Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans.
ISR researchers also collaborate with social
scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other
projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with
universities in Poland, China and South Africa. ISR is also home to the
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, the
world's largest computerized social science data archive. Visit the ISR
Web site at
http://www.isr.umich.edu/home/ for more information.
