Andrew Manigault
Andrew Manigault, a graduate student in Psychology at Ohio University, was a co-author on a paper featured in a Premium Health News Service story headlined “Husbands benefit from mutual caregiving, wives feel more distressed.”
A Yale School of Public Health study finds that in older marriages, husbands benefit more from mutual caregiving than wives and wives feel more distressed in such relationships.
Spouses in older marriages are increasingly taking on the role of their partner’s caregiver in dealing with chronic conditions like heart disease, memory loss, and cancer. In a growing number of instances, both spouses care for each other as they struggle with any one of a variety of health issues such as arthritis, diabetes, and respiratory problems.
In a Yale School of Public Health study published in Health Psychology, researchers investigated how both giving and receiving support affects husbands’ and wives’ blood pressure and emotions when both partners are dealing with health conditions.
The researchers expected that mutual caregiving would lower blood pressure and heart rate for both individuals and that wives would likely reap more benefit from the support than husbands.
Read the Premium Health News Service story.
The journal article, “Gender differences in short-term cardiovascular effects of giving and receiving support for health concerns in marriage” was published in Health Psychology.
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