Researchers also found that the financial advantages of marriage have nearly nothing to do with health benefits, which rely exclusively on the emotional bonds of matrimony. These patterns were minimally explained by greater economic resources among married patients, including having private health insurance and living in higher socioeconomic status neighborhoods. “Particularly, we looked over health insurance at surviving in a higher socioeconomic position neighborhood and we looked”.
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However, this is not the first study that linked the marital status of a person with the duration of survival in cancer patients. She and her colleagues chose to see whether money played a role in the survival advantage of married couples.
That’s because research suggests that men benefit more socially from marriage, said Catherine Powers-James, a psychology researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Compared with cancer patients who were married, those who were unmarried had lower rates of cancer-related death. It was therefore important to identify why this is the case, she said, suggesting that it could be because they had someone to take them to appointments, support them during bouts of depression and remind them to take their medication on time. “It can be very hard if you’re single and you don’t have any other means to get to the doctor”.
Martinez suggested that the research shows that in the future unmarried patients may need new types of interventions to increase their chances of survival.
Additional study co-authors include Kristin Anderson, James D. Murphy, UC San Diego; Susan Hurley, Alison J. Canchola, Cancer Prevention Institute of California; Theresa H.M. Keegan, UC Davis; Iona Cheng, Christina Clarke, Sally L. Glaser, and Scarlett L. Gomez, Cancer Prevention Institute of California and Stanford. Instead, the support and care of a spouse played a significant role in reducing stress and improve the outcome overall.
“Our hypothesis is that non-Hispanic whites don’t have the same social network as other cultures that have stronger bonds with family and friends outside of marriage”.
“These findings aren’t unique to cancer”, Cannady said.
“These findings aren’t unique to cancer”, Cannady said.
Cancer patients may live longer if they are married, with the effect varying by place of birth and race/ethnicity. “There is something to be claimed about having that sort of serious and important connection”.
While the research backs up a number of studies that have previously highlighted the trend, the new study goes further, exploring the strength of the effect in patients of different race and ethnicity.
Male, non-Hispanic, white bachelors were found to experience the worst outcome, as this group had a 24% higher mortality rate than their married counterparts.
The results also showed that unmarried patients born outside of the U.S. experienced better survival rates compared to those born in the US.
The result of being married on success differed across national and racial groups, according to a spouse research also printed within the journal’s same dilemma.
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For more on caregiving for a cancer patient, visit the American Cancer Society.
