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Treating wife’s stress may be indirect care
for men with Prostate Cancer
By Taunya English, Associate Editor
Health Behavior News Service
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.
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