Links of communal coping to relationship and psychological health in type 2 diabetes: actor–partner interdependence models involving role, sex, and race

Abstract

Background Communal coping is one person’s appraisal of a stressor as shared and collaboration with a partner to manage the problem. There is a burgeoning literature demonstrating the link of communal coping to good relationships and health among persons with chronic disease. Purpose We examined links of communal coping to relationship and psychological functioning among couples in which one person was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. We distinguished effects of own communal coping from partner communal coping on both patient and spouse relationship and psychological functioning, as well as whether communal coping effects were moderated by role (patient, spouse), sex (male, female), and race (White, Black). Methods Participants were 200 couples in which one person had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (46% Black, 45% female) within the last 5 years. Couples completed an in-person interview, participated in a discussion to address diabetes-related problems, and completed a postdiscussion questionnaire. Results Own communal coping and partner communal coping were related to good relationship and psychological functioning. Interactions with role, sex, and race suggested: (i) partner communal coping is more beneficial for patients than spouses; (ii) own communal coping is more beneficial for men, whereas partner communal coping is more beneficial for women; and (iii) White patients and Black spouses benefit more from own communal coping than Black patients and White spouses. Conclusion These findings demonstrate the benefits of communal coping across an array of self-report and observed indices, but suggest there are differential benefits across role, sex, and race.

Communal coping: A multi-method approach with links to relationships and health

“…Although we did not have the power to determine whether our models generalized across sex and race, we conducted a series of sex by race analyses of variance on all study variables. These results are presented in Supplementary Table 3 (some of which have been reported in a previous publication, Helgeson, Naqvi et al, 2019, as noted in this table). Briefly, there were race differences in several communal appraisal measures, all in the direction of higher shared appraisal among White individuals than Black individuals.…”

Couples managing chronic illness: A test of the extended theoretical model of communal coping

“…Both of our research questions inquired about the presence of partner effects in our data, yet no partner effects were indicated by our analyses. Recent communal coping research has uncovered partner effects (e.g., Helgeson et al, 2020; Lee, Helgeson, Van Vleet, Kelly et al, 2020; Rentscher et al, 2017), so their absence here was surprising. In particular, previous work shows a clear and consistent pattern of spouse effects on patient (panelist) outcomes.…”

“…Recent theoretical (Rentscher, 2019) and empirical (Zajdel & Helgeson, 2020) work has also argued that appraisal and action are distinct and that if scholars want to understand the nuances of communal coping, they should measure and model the dimensions separately. Because few scholars have separated the two in the past, it is difficult to tease out why appraisal and action behaved so differently based on prior work; however, it is possible that appraisal precedes action (Zajdel & Helgeson, 2020), that there are important mediators to take into account (Helgeson et al, 2020), or that biological and behavioral processes are responsible for these differences (Rentscher, 2019). It is also possible that because shared appraisal is cognitive and joint action is behavioral, the patterns observed here echo work on problem-focused coping (which directly reduces the impact of the stressor) and emotion-focused coping (which alleviates negative emotion around stress).…”

Dyadic Coping in Couples Facing Chronic Physical Illness: A Systematic Review

“…Partners' communal coping, however, was more beneficial for patients than spouses and for women than men. Furthermore, white patients and black spouses benefited more from their own communal coping than black patients and white spouses (Helgeson et al, 2020a).…”