The Gerontologist Does Type of Disease Matter? Gender Differences Among Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease Spouse Caregivers

Mental health outcomes are widely re-ported among spouse caregivers, with wives generally faring worse than husbands. We hypothesized that gender differ-ences would not be as strong in a cognitively intact group be-cause caring for cognitively intact spouses may involve less severe reciprocity losses. We also examined gender differ-ences in coping strategies within each group. Design and method: 175 spouse caregivers for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD;