In a couple where one of the partners is diagnosed with cancer, women are more consistently and severely distressed than men, regardless of whether they are the person with the disease. The results of a research paper appearing in the Psychological Bulletin report that when a couple must cope with a diagnosis of cancer, gender plays a significant role.

For more than twenty-years, researchers have accumulated anecdotal and statistical evidence that has been inconclusive as to who carries the greater psychological burden in a couple struggling with the diagnosis of cancer – the patient or the spouse. As a result, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands, analyzed the findings of 43 studies from around the world that assessed distress in couples coping with cancer.

“It is the gender that matters,” said James C. Coyne MD, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a co-author of the study. “Past studies focused on who has the cancer, not gender, and that explains the inconsistency in the findings,” he said.

“In practical terms, breast cancer patients are going to be, on average, more distressed than their husbands; but the wives of prostate cancer patients are going to be, on average, more distressed than their husbands,” said the study’s lead author, Mariët Hagedoorn, Professor of Health Psychology at the University Medical Center Groningen.

“Only a minority of cancer patients suffer clinically significant distress,” added Hagedoorn. “The myth that all cancer patients are distressed gets in the way of getting the proper attention to those patients who do become significantly distressed and who could benefit from a clinical intervention.”

SOURCES:
Psychological Bulletin, January 2008
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (http://www.uphs.upenn.edu)