Study: Dying of heartbreak possible

The elderly really can die of broken hearts, not only when their spouses die, but also when they are hospitalized.

But the problem reflects increased stress more than romantic loss, according to the first large study to examine the phenomenon.

Studying the Medicare records of more than half a million couples, researchers found that the more burdensome and stressful a spouse’s condition, the more likely the partner would die, according to a report today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The death of a spouse increases a man’s risk of dying in the next year by 21 percent and a woman’s risk by 17 percent. Hospitalization of a spouse increases the risk almost as much in the first month, but over the long term by only about a quarter of that amount.

“It’s very hard to see someone you love who is sick, it is hard to care for them, and it is hard on your health,” said Nicholas A. Christakis of the Harvard Medical School, one of the lead authors of the study. “People are interconnected, and their health is too.”

The study is the first quantification of phenomena that doctors and those who care for the elderly know well.

Christakis and sociologist Paul D. Allison of the University of Pennsylvania studied 518,240 couples with an average age of 75 for the men and 72 for the women. The couples were tracked for nine years.

Previous studies have shown that the illness of a spouse affects the partner’s health. Christakis and Allison wanted to see if a spouse’s illness had an even more serious effect, increasing the risk of dying.

Men proved to be at the greatest risk from the so-called widower effect or caregiver burden.

If their wives were hospitalized for dementia, about 8.9 percent of men died within a year, compared with the normal rate of about 6.4 percent per year. For psychiatric illnesses, about 7.5 percent died. For stroke, about 6.9 percent.

Why men suffer more from the loss of a spouse is really not clear, the researchers said. Much sociological research, however, shows that men derive a greater benefit than women from being married, and that may play a crucial role.

Moreover, Solomon said, women usually tend to be more outgoing, to be the social organizers for a couple. “If she is in the hospital, the man is more likely to be sitting home alone by himself.”