1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«Our purpose in this study is […] to examine, among patients with one or more chronic conditions, the relation between marital status, the presence of conflict in the relationship with the spouse/partner, what the patients do to manage their illness as well as how they perceive their health.» (p. 2)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«Data from the Quebec Health Survey 1998(QHS) were used.» (p. 2)

Instruments :
Questionnaire

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«First, when the perceived conflict with the spouse/partner is examined in relation to measures of perceived health and psychological distress, strong associations are revealed between measures of self-perceived mental health and psychological distress and all levels of perceived conflict for both males and females. These findings take their meaning with studies that show that patients with higher emotional strain – such as in chronically conflicted relationship – report more depressive symptoms and a negative perception of their health […]. Second, results of this study converge with previous research that indicates that gender is an important moderator of the association between structural and functional qualities of the couple relationship and health […]. Two prominent gender differences stand out. The first is that marital status does not show any pattern of association with our measure of illness management for men, whereas women who declared that they were never married and did not live with their partner reported negative perceptions of their health and higher psychological distress than married women who lived with their spouse. The second gender difference is that perceived conflict in the couple seems to be associated with efforts at self-care […] for women but not for men.» (p. 5)