[Psychosocial distress and communication about cancer in ill partners and their spouses]

Each cancer can have a psychological impact not only on the patient himself/herself, but also on his/her spouse.

Our study concerned 30 couples encompassing a member treated for a cancer, non related to gender. It was aimed at determining the links between the levels of psychosocial distress measured in both members of each couple, patients' sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, as well as communication skills about cancer in both members of the couples.

Psychosocial distress and communication about cancer were measured by the general health questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the openness to discuss cancer in the nuclear family (ODCF), with an additional version adapted for the spouse on the occasion of this study.

A positive correlation was found between the respective scores of the two members of the couples, for the GHQ-28 (r=0.53; p=0.005) as well as for the ODCF (r=0.44; p=0.024). GHQ-28 scores were not associated with the sociodemographic characteristics of the patients, nor with the stage of cancer, the number of months elapsed since the diagnosis of cancer, or the ODCF personal or spouse's score. On the other hand, when the communication within each couple was classified into concordant (insufficient or, on the contrary, open for both members) or discordant (insufficient for one of the two members and open for the other), and after controlling for gender, higher levels of psychosocial distress were found in patients (p=0.038) as well in spouses (p=0.052) belonging to discordant compared with concordant couples.

These results suggest an effect of contamination or a mutual reinforcement of the distress of each member of such couples, as well as the presence of relatively similar styles of communication in the two partners of each couple. They also underline the possible adaptive function of a restricted style of communication about cancer, if such a restriction is shared by both the members of the couple, and incites particular attention to be paid to couples where one of the partners, but not the other, adopt an open style of communication about cancer.