ATLANTA, March 21 (UPI) -- In couples dealing with cancer, the physical health of husbands seems vulnerable to the poor emotional well-being of their wives, a U.S. study found.
The study of 168 married couples had one of the partners with a breast or prostate cancer diagnosis about two years before participating in American Cancer Society surveys, from which the study data were drawn.
"We found an interesting pattern. The psychological distress of the female partner seemed to have the greatest effect -- whether the woman was the breast cancer survivor or the caregiver of a man with prostate cancer," lead researcher Youngmee Kim of the American Cancer Society's Behavioral Research Center in Atlanta said in a statement.
"If the female has higher level of psychological distress, the male partner will have higher level of psychosomatic problems."
However, the study also found husbands with wives under high stress rarely reported psychological or emotional problems.
"Men tend not to say that psychological stress associated with cancer diagnosis and treatment is a problem, but they tend to somatize -- to manifest mental pain as pain in one's body -- those stresses, reporting headaches, backaches," Kim said.
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