Report: Women More Likely to Be Abandoned by Spouses When Serious Illness Strikes
A new report published in the journal Cancer has some very disturbing findings. Women who received a diagnosis of cancer are seven times more likely to get divorced than men who receive a similar diagnosis. The study focused on brain cancer patients: the oncologists had noticed a disturbing trend in their practices. Most of the men who had a brain tumor got full support from their wives. But many of their female patients were undergoing treatment alone.
When Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a Seattle oncologist, was treating his brain cancer patients, he noticed an alarming pattern. His male patients were typically receiving much-needed support from their wives. But a number of his female patients were going it alone, ending up separated or divorced after receiving a brain tumor diagnosis.
Dr. Chamberlain, chief of the neuro-oncology division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, had heard similar stories from his colleagues. To find out if these observations were based in fact, he embarked on a study with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute and colleagues from three other institutions who began to collect data on 515 patients who received diagnoses of brain tumors or multiple sclerosis from 2001 through 2006.
The results were surprising. Women in the study who were told they had a serious illness were seven times as likely to become separated or divorced as men with similar health problems, according to the report published in the journal Cancer.
Over all, about 12 percent of the patients in the study ended up separated or divorced, a rate that was similar to that found in the general American population during that time period. (Lifetime divorce rates in the United States are higher.) But the pattern changed when the researchers looked at the patient-divorce breakdown by sex. When the man became ill, only 3 percent experienced the end of a marriage. But among women, about 21 percent ended up separated or divorced. Among couples who split up, divorce occurred, on average, about six months after the diagnosis, although there was wide variability in the timing.
There was no data as to who initiated the divorce proceedings but it seems most unlikely that the women were more likely to demand a divorce just because they got a cancer diagnosis. Naturally, the case of John and Elizabeth Edwards comes to mind: when Elizabeth got sick, John had an affair (several of them if the latest reports are to believed). The study does not address why women are much more likely than men to be abandoned by spouses when they are seriously ill.
