January, 2005
Widowed men and women who enjoyed good marriages are less likely than those whose marriages were bad to be depressed four years after their spouse's death. These "good marriages" seemed to have a protective impact on surviving spouses in a recent study, while bad marriages resulted in ongoing negative emotions in the widowed partner.
These findings were presented at the January 2005 meeting of the Gerontological Society of America. The data were taken from an ongoing study entitled "Changing Lives of Older Couples." Researchers conducted initial interviews with 1,532 older married men and women in the Detroit metro area in 1987 and 1988. They tracked participant deaths and conducted follow-up interviews with bereaved spouses six, 18 and 48 months later. The interview results were compared with a control group of individuals from the study who had not lost a spouse.
Participants were asked about the quality of their relationship and their marriage and their independence from their spouse in the initial interviews. They were asked questions such as "How much does your spouse make you feel loved and cared for? How much is your spouse willing to listen when you need to talk about your worries or problems? Thinking about your marriage as a whole, how often do you feel happy about it?" Questions getting at independence asked subjects to imagine that their husband (or wife) was away visiting relatives or friends for a couple of weeks. "Please tell me how true each statement is as it applies to you: I would not know what to do if my spouse were away. If I could not talk to my spouse everyday it would really bother me. I hate being home alone."
The researchers found that adjustment to widowhood was a dynamic process, with bereaved spouses showing considerable change in their levels of depression in the four years following their loss. Men and women who had positive attitudes about their spouse and marriage at the start of the study were significantly less depressed four years after their spouse's death. Those who had more negative views of their marriage at the start of the study were more depressed four years after being widowed. Those who were more independent in their marriage showed more depression soon after their spouse died, but less depression than highly dependent subjects four years after the loss.
While negative evaluations of their marriage and their partner did not predict depression at baseline or up to a year-and-a-half after the loss, it did have a significant link with depression four years later. Graduate student Nina Rhee, one of the researchers, explained the results this way: "One possible explanation is that widows and widowers realized that they did not have a great relationship or that their spouses were not good to them. These negative views may not have affected their immediate reaction because of other factors associated with grief. But as their grief decreases, the actual reality of their marriage may have a greater impact on their well-being four years later. Right after death you tend to focus on the good qualities of the deceased. But by four years later, you're looking at things more realistically."
Reference: The Changing Lives of Older Couples Study
Last edited 11/4/05
