What's Love Got to Do with It?

Abstract

Marital interaction and health issues exert reciprocal influences upon each other, often differing along gender lines. Research shows that couple dynamics influence the immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems, and self-reported health status; and medical problems can affect all areas of a couple's functioning, including communication, sexual and emotional intimacy, and role flexibility, for example. Many practicing marriage and family therapists (MFTs) are not familiar with these issues, since medical family therapy is a fairly new concept and many MFT programs do not cover such areas in depth. This paper will provide a broad overview of how medical issues affect couples and vice versa, will explore the impact of breast cancer on a couple's functioning as a disease-specific example, and will include recommendations for practicing clinicians.

Key Words:

• Medical family therapy
• marriage and family therapy
• marital interaction
• health outcomes
• biopsychosocial model
• behavioral medicine