Journal of Health Psychology

The significant and often long-term emotional and physical health consequences of providing care to a chronically ill family member have been well documented (Schulz and Sherwood, 2008; Vitaliano et al., 2003). However, there is a great deal of variability in levels of distress among caregivers, and gender appears to be an important predictor of this variability. According to a meta-analysis of 229 studies, female caregivers are at greater risk of depression than male caregivers, and these gender differences are substantially larger than those found in the general population (Pinquart and Sörensen, 2006). Hagedoorn and colleagues (2008) came to a similar conclusion in their meta-analysis of gender differences in dis-tress among couples coping with cancer, which found that wives are significantly more distressed than their husbands (Hagedoorn, Sanderman