Older adults rarely face the stress of living with
advanced cancer in a social vacuum. Partners and
spouses are
profoundly affected by, and contribute to the
patients experience
with illness. Partners provide the bulk of emotional
and physical
support and share in medical decision-making, treatment
adherence and psychosocial adjustment.
Psycho-oncology research
primarily emphasizes the individual responses of patients
and partners to
illness. Relatively little empirical attention has
been paid to the
partner relationship, and less to older couples. This
study examined
the subjective and...