Treating Wife’s Stress May Be Indirect Care for Men
With Prostate Cancer
When couple dealing with cancer, a partner’s
psychological distress might drag down the well-being of either person
By Taunya English, Associate Editor,
Health Behavior News Service
March
24, 2008 - When a couple is dealing with cancer, a partner’s
psychological distress might drag down the well-being of either person,
according to a new study of 168 married couples.
“Whether it is my own or my partner’s,
psychological distress may impact my quality of life,” said lead
researcher Youngmee Kim, director of Family Studies at the American
Cancer Society’s Behavioral Research Center in Atlanta.
The physical health of husbands seemed to be
especially vulnerable to the poor emotional well-being of their wives.
“We found an interesting pattern. The psychological
distress of the female partner seemed to have the greatest effect —
whether the woman was the breast cancer survivor or the caregiver of a
man with prostate cancer. If the female has higher level of
psychological distress, the male partner will have higher level of
psychosomatic problems,” Kim said.
The study appears in the April issue of the Annals
of Behavioral Medicine.
All of the couples in the study were male-female
pairs. In all cases, one of the partners had received a breast or
prostate cancer diagnosis about two years before participating in
American Cancer Society surveys, from which the new study data were
drawn.
In the survey, husbands with wives under high
stress rarely reported psychological or emotional problems.
“Men tend not to say that psychological stress
associated with cancer diagnosis and treatment is a problem, but they
tend to somatize those stresses, reporting headaches, backaches. Maybe
men are not conditioned or socialized to express those touchy feelings.
They tend to show those feelings — let them come out — through their
body,” Kim said.
Kim and her colleagues said their study could be a
starting point for identifying groups of people who might benefit from
programs designed to improve coping skills or reduce stress.
In particular, helping women manage psychological
stress might improve the mental and physical health of both partners
dealing with cancer, Kim said.
“Often in clinical practice, we only pay attention
to the patient or survivor – try to improve their distress. But beyond
focusing on the patient — in addition to treating the survivor’s stress
— we need to include or pay attention to caregiving wives. That will
impact the patient. It’s indirect care,” Kim said.
“People are starting to understand that some
cancers can be seen as a couples’ disease,” said Frank Penedo, associate
professor in the Division of Bio-behavioral Oncology and Cancer Control
at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
“The males’ perception of how well they function
physically in some ways depends on the support they get from their
partner,” Penedo said.
When a man has a stressed-out wife, reports from
the men suggest it is their physical health, not emotional well-being,
that is likely to suffer, he said.
Editor’s Notes
Annals of Behavioral Medicine is the official
peer-reviewed publication of The Society of Behavioral Medicine. For
information about the journal, contact Alan J. Christensen, Ph.D., at
(319) 335-3396. Visit the Society of Behavioral Medicine at http://www.springer.com/public+health/journal/12160.
Kim Y, et al. Quality of life of couples dealing
with cancer: dyadic and individual adjustment among breast and prostate
cancer survivors and their spousal caregivers. Annals of Behavioral
Medicine 35(2), 2008.
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March
24, 2008 - When a couple is dealing with cancer, a partner’s
psychological distress might drag down the well-being of either person,
according to a new study of 168 married couples.