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.
It's very hard to see someone you love who is sick; it is hard to care for them, and it is hard on your health. People are interconnected, and their health is, too.
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.
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.
People are interconnected and their health is too. We pay a lot of attention to other risk factors for ill health: tobacco exposure, poverty. Here's another risk factor: having an ill partner.
On the one hand, it's common sense it's hard to see someone you love get sick or die. People are interconnected and their health is, too.
When a spouse is hospitalized, the partner's risk of death increases significantly and remains elevated for up to two years.
These are a huge set of issues of fundamental social science interest that shed light on the workings of society.
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.
Over the first 30 days it can be almost as bad for you to have a sick spouse as a dead spouse.
You can die of a broken heart not just when your partner dies but also when your partner falls ill.
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.
The timing of such interventions might be matched to the riskiest times for caregivers, for example, just after the hospitalization of the spouse.
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.
A spouse with cancer is generally not as burdensome for a partner as more disabling conditions such as dementia, where you combine both the stress of caring for the spouse and waning social support from your partner.
What it shows is that people are interconnected, and their health is interconnected, and seeing a person you love suffer, seeing them ill, harms you.
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