While previous research has looked into the so-called "widowhood effect," in which a person faces a higher risk of death after their husband or wife dies, Reuters Health reports that a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health has determined that it is the strongest during the first three months.
"The widowhood question is interesting because it is ubiquitous. At some point or the other one partner will die leaving the other and this will happen to everyone regardless of class, caste, socioeconomic status," Dr. S. V. Subramanian, who worked on the study at Harvard, told Reuters Health in an email.
Researchers examined data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, which surveyed pver 26,000 Americans over the age of 50 every two years, and focused on 12,316 of the participants who were married in 1998, following them through 2008 and recorded which ones died and when. During the study period, 2,912 people died, and of them, 2,373 were married and survived by a grieving spouse.
The researchers discovered that survivors had a 66 percent chance of dying during the first three months after their husband or wife had died. Of the 539 people who died over the course of the study, fifty of them died three months after losing their spouse, 26 between three and six months afterwards and 44 between six months and a year later.
While researchers are unsure of what exactly causes the "widowhood effect," Subramanian suggests that it may be a "grief-related mechanism" or a result of the surviving spouse neglecting their own health after caring for their ill partner for an extended period of time. And as only people over the age of 50 were studied, it is unclear how or if the "widowhood effect" effects younger couples.
"What insulates people from grief and stress is a good sense of support. Be around for this person," Dr. Ken Doka, a gerontologist at the Graduate School of The College of New Rochelle in New York and a senior consultant to the Hospice Foundation of America, told Reuters Health. "Grief is extraordinarily stressful and when you're older and frailer it's harder to cope with stress."
Doka advises that friends and family of a grieving widow or widower keep an eye on how the person is handling the changes to their lifestyle and be there for support.
"Maybe they used to go for a walk every night but now they're not doing that anymore. Maybe they're not sleeping well, or maybe not taking their medications," he said. "One of the problems widowers often have is the lack of support and one of the reasons is that very often the wife, historically, is the keeper of the kids. She's the one that called the kids up and said they should come over for dinner, so it's not unusual that widowers will often say no one ever stops over any more, because they didn't realize someone else was calling and inviting them
