Close ties between the ill (elderly) and their spouses

According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, research on the Medicare records of a sample size of more than half a million couples reveals that the more burdensome and stressful a spouse's condition, the more likely their partner would be to die themselves within a year.

While the risk of death of a woman in the year following her spouse’s death increases by 17%, for men the figure stands at 21%.

"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," said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis of the Harvard Medical School, one of the lead authors of the study. "People are interconnected, and their health is too."
 
 This is the first study that provides quantifiable data in support of a phenomenon familiar to doctors and those who care for the elderly.

As per Rabbi Carla Howard, director of the Jewish Hospice Project in Los Angeles the phenomenon is
  particularly prominent in childless couples who dwell in nucler families.

Christakis and sociologist Paul D. Allison of the University of Pennsylvania tracked 518,240 couples for nine years to successfully interpret the effect a spouse's illness had on the risk of dying.

Following hospitalization of their wives for ailments like dementia, psychiatric illnesses and stroke about 8.9%, 7.5% and 6.9% men died within a year respectively as compared to the normal rate of  about 6.4% per year suggesting that men were more vulnerable to the so-called widower effect or caregiver burden.
 
However no significant effects were observed in case of hospitalization for colon or several other types of cancer supposedly due to long periods of good health that cancer patients can experience.

Women on the other hand showed erratic changes in the risk of death when their husbands were hospitalized. The risk factor rose sharply for a month or so before receding slowly and finally rising again after six months or more.

The causes of death of the bereaved spouse included heart attacks, suicides, inattentiveness, accidents and infections and plans to analyze the same in greater detail are on the cards.

The study didn't examine the reasons for the increased risk, but many are obvious, experts said.
 
 "The death of a spouse is the most significant stressor anyone can have," said Dr. Mary Harward, a geriatrics specialist at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. "And given the population we deal with, the death of a spouse is fairly common."