Marital quality, gender, and biomarkers of disease risk in the MIDUS cohort

2012-11-12This dissertation aims to elucidate the psychosocial and physiological mechanisms through which marriage affects health outcomes and disease processes by linking measures of marital quality (satisfaction, support, strain, disagreement) to physiological mechanisms that have been associated with psychosocial factors and adverse health outcomes: inflammation, neural regulation of the heart, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. Data from the National Survey of Midlife in the United States are used, utilizing the main survey, the biomarker substudy, and the daily diary study. Higher spousal strain was weakly associated with higher inflammation among men and women, and that higher spousal support was associated with lower levels of inflammation among women, but not men. Higher levels of spousal strain and disagreement were associated with lower heart rate variability, and that higher levels of marital satisfaction and spousal support were associated with higher HRV. Men with higher levels of marital strain and disagreement have lower waking values of cortisol and greater cortisol awakening responses, with some indication of greater decreases in cortisol in the early evening, but higher values in the later evening. However, for women marital quality was not associated with differences in cortisol secretory patterns over the day. Taken together, these empirical papers show the importance of marital quality for understanding the health of the married. In general, the studies from this dissertation highlight the fact that there is heterogeneity in the health of the married. Individuals in good marriages (i.e., low in negative characteristics and/or high in positive characteristics) tend to appear healthier than those in bad marriages (i.e., high in negative characteristics and/or low in positive characteristics)