Research from 2006 showed that cancer patients have a higher risk of psychological complaints. Now, new research has shown that partners of cancer patients are also declining in physical and psychological health. Katarina Sjövall of the Academic Medical Center in Lund has investigated this.
She studied data from 11,076 partners, 53 percent of whom were older than 65 and more than half were women. It was investigated whether in the two years following the cancer diagnosis of their husbands or wives themselves more often made use of health care.
In partners of people with colon cancer or lung cancer, the psychological care after diagnosis was three times higher than before. Partners of prostate cancer patients also made relatively more use of psychiatric care .
