Coping with Loss of a Spouse - report - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 2001

Losing a spouse is one of the most stressful events a person can experience. Nevertheless, most older adults are resilient and bounce back to earlier levels of physical and psychological health within 18 months of their loss, according to bereavement studies from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, Ann Arbor. The findings call into question the widespread belief that the sudden death of a spouse is more difficult for the surviving member of the couple than a long-anticipated death. For older men, especially, the sudden death of their wives is actually easier to handle psychologically than a lingering illness.

Moreover, the research debunks a longstanding doctrine of psychologists and bereavement counselors that the more conflicted and unhappy the marital relationship, the more a guilt-ridden surviving spouse is likely to grieve. Instead, it confirms the common-sense view that the closer a marital relationship was, the more depressed the surviving spouse is likely to be.

The research is part of an ongoing analysis of data from the ISR Changing Lives of Older Couples study, a survey of 1,532 married men and women age 65 and older, started in 1987. Over the years, the researchers have monitored the deaths of participants and followed up with interviews of the surviving spouses at six months, 18 months, and four years after their losses. They also reinterviewed members of married couples in the study who had not yet lost their spouses, then matched these still-married elders with the widows and widowers on key demographic variables, including income, education, and health. In addition to detailed information on each person's physical and mental health, collected both before and after a spouse's death, the study contains information on the quality of their marital relationships.

"Collecting data before the spouse dies allows us to avoid both positive and negative recall bias," sociologist Deborah Carr explains. "Some people just can't say anything negative about a spouse who's dead. `Oh, he didn't drink a drop.' `He was a saint.' Other people get so depressed, their current mood colors their assessment of the quality of their marriage. They remember things being a lot worse than they really were."

Carr found that the closer the marital relationship, the more depressed men and women were likely to be after their spouses died. Surviving spouses who were better off economically, as measured by home ownership, were likely to be more depressed than peers who lived in apartments or retirement communities. "Those who own a home may do worse because they have the added strain of caring for a house," she speculates. "They may be more socially isolated, lonely, and even afraid of living in a home alone, compared to surviving spouses who live in apartments and have neighbors close by."

Women who were highly dependent on their husbands for male-stereotyped tasks such as financial management and home repairs were at higher risk for anxiety as widows. "These findings suggest a changing picture for bereavement among older couples," Carr notes, "as more egalitarian divisions of labor make women less dependent on their husbands for home repair and financial management, and as couples are more likely to dissolve dissatisfying marriages and remain in unions with higher levels of marital satisfaction."

Sudden death was more emotionally distressing to women than to men. "Men cope best if their wives' deaths are quick and unexpected, while women cope best if their husbands' deaths come after some period of warning. I think it's because ... women are used to the role of caregivers and don't find it stressful. But men do." Moreover, men and women often have very different types of personal relationships. "Women may have friends to turn to for support during the long and drawn-out process of widowhood, whereas men may withdraw from others and seek closeness only from their dying wives."