Marital quality and health: A meta-analytic review.

Abstract

This meta-analysis reviewed 126 published empirical articles over the past 50 years describing associations between marital relationship quality and physical health in over 72,000 individuals. Health outcomes included clinical endpoints (objective assessments of function, disease severity, and mortality; subjective health assessments) and surrogate endpoints (biological markers that substitute for clinical endpoints, such as blood pressure). Biological mediators included cardiovascular reactivity and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity. Greater marital quality was related to better health, with mean effect sizes from r = .07 to .21, including lower risk of mortality, r = .11, and lower cardiovascular reactivity during marital conflict, r = −.13, but not daily cortisol slopes or cortisol reactivity during conflict. The small effect sizes were similar in magnitude to previously found associations between health behaviors (e.g., diet) and health outcomes. Effect sizes for a small subset of clinical outcomes were susceptible to publication bias. In some studies, effect sizes remained significant after accounting for confounds such as age and socioeconomic status. Studies with a higher proportion of women in the sample demonstrated larger effect sizes, but we found little evidence for gender differences in studies that explicitly tested gender moderation, with the exception of surrogate endpoint studies. Our conclusions are limited by small numbers of studies for specific health outcomes, unexplained heterogeneity, and designs that limit causal inferences. These findings highlight the need to explicitly test affective, health behavior, and biological mechanisms in future research, and focus on moderating factors that may alter the relationship between marital quality and health.

Fatores preditores para incapacidade funcional de idosos atendidos na atenção básica

“…Elderly persons without partners have a higher tendency to functional incapacity. It is known that the state of widowhood may influence negatively the functional capacity of the elderly (8) . The representativeness of the variable "color" highlighted the need for reflecting on the social inequalities that pervade society, different life experiences being determined from ethnic differences, and should therefore be interpreted with caution.…”

“…The elderly, in their home environment, usually reside with spouses and children, or with spouse, children and grandchildren, the so-called "multi-generational arrangement", which has become common in Brazil (8) . A characteristic feature of old age in developing or underdeveloped countries is the high proportion of older people who lead a sedentary lifestyle, still associated with the image of the elderly as being dependent and isolated.…”

A Qualitative Study on Marital Challenges of Chronic Hepatitis B Patients

“…According to research of the last half a century, low marital life quality, measured subjectively or objectively, can lead to poor health (35). Desirable marital quality contributes to maintain couples' physical health (36).…”

Environmental and Personal Factors as Predictors of Marital Adjustment- An Investigation in Pakistani Context

“…Marital adjustment is conceptualized as the amount of similarity between the expectations a person has and the rewards the person receives. The important component of marital adjustment is marital satisfaction (Robles et al, 2014). Marital adjustment is considered to be affected many factors such as communication style, educational level, humor, personality, sexual satisfaction, family structure and duration of marriage the brief explanation of which are discussed below in the Table 2.…”