Because people are interconnected, we think this phenomenon we studied in elderly married couples applies more generally. We are looking at broader connections -- between parent and child, brother and sister, neighbors, and friends. |
If you are living at the margin, economically or in terms of age or being sicker, you are more vulnerable to your spouse being sick. If I am richer or younger, it is not as big a shock. |
Initially the partner is at increased risk from heart attack, suicide, and accidents. I am shocked my wife is sick and I stop paying attention when driving. And there is an increase in infections. |
It is the disablement and not the lethality of a spouse's illness that can be harmful to you and contribute to your risk of dying. |
It seems clear that a person's illness or death can have health consequences for others in his or her social network. This means that efforts to reduce disease, disability, and death can be self-reinforcing, since a decrease in the burden of these events in one person can have a cascading benefit for others. The training and assistance of caregivers can lower costs and also improve the health of patients and caregivers alike. |
It's the disabling of the disease that can harm (the partner). Having a spouse with cancer doesn't really increase my risk of death. |
Our work suggests that interventions might decrease the mortality of caregivers. Interventions are likely to be useful in certain diseases, such as stroke and dementia, and the timing of such interventions might be matched to the riskiest times for caregivers, for example, just after the hospitalization of the spouse. |
Over the first 30 days it can be almost as bad for you to have a sick spouse as a dead spouse. |
Spousal illness or death may impose stress on a partner or deprive a partner of social, emotional, economic, or other practical support. When a spouse falls ill or dies, partners may increase harmful behavior, such as drinking. Stress and lack of social support may also adversely affect immunologic measures, so spousal hospitalization may have physiological effects on partners. |
These are a huge set of issues of fundamental social science interest that shed light on the workings of society. |
We showed it's not just death that can give you a broken heart, but illness in your spouse can give you a broken heart and contribute to death. |
We showed you can die of a broken heart not just when your partner dies, but when your partner falls ill. We showed it is not just death that can give you a broken heart, but illness -- even when the spouses don't die. |
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. |
You can die of a broken heart not just when your partner dies but also when your partner falls ill. |
You can save my life by taking better care of my spouse as she dies. People care about the burden of their death on their loved ones. When I'm sick I want to know the impact of my health on the health of my loved ones. |