title: The Relationship between Marital Status and Psychological Resilience in Chronic Pain.
abstract: We examined the relationship between marital status and a 2-stage model of pain-related effect, consisting of pain unpleasantness and suffering. We studied 1914 chronic pain patients using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to clarify whether marital status was a determinant factor in the emotional or ideational suffering associated with chronic pain after controlling for pain sensation intensity, age, and ethnicity. Marital status was unrelated to immediate unpleasantness (P = 0.08). We found a strong association with emotional suffering (P < 0.0001) but not with negative illness beliefs (P = 0.44). Interestingly, widowed subjects experienced significantly less frustration, fear, and anger than all other groups (married, divorced, separated, or single). A final MANCOVA including sex as a covariate revealed that the emotional response to pain was the same for both widow and widower. Only those individuals whose spouse died experienced less emotional turmoil in the face of a condition threatening their lifestyle. These data suggest that after experiencing the death of a spouse, an individual may derive some "emotional inoculation" against future lifestyle threat.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, P.O. Box 980268, Richmond, VA 23298-0268, USA.
authors.forename: James B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Wade
authors.forename: Robert P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Hart
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Wade
authors.forename: Jasmohan S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Bajaj
authors.forename: Donald D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Price