ABSTRACT
Increased genetic testing in personalized medicine presents unique challenges for couples, including managing disease risk and potential discrimination as a couple. This study investigated couples’ conflicts and support gaps as they coped with perceived genetic discrimination. We also explored the degree to which communal coping was beneficial in reducing support gaps and ultimately stress. Dyadic analysis of married adults (N = 266, 133 couples), in which one person had the genetic risk for serious illness, showed that perceived discrimination predicted more frequent conflicts about alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency-related treatment, privacy boundaries, and finances, which, in turn, predicted wider gaps in emotion and esteem support, and greater stress for both spouses. Communal coping predicted lower support gaps for both partners and marginally lower stress.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the members of the Alpha-1 Research Registry and their spouses for sharing their thoughts with us. We thank Roxanne Parrott, Anne Merrill, Mary Poss, Amber Worthington, and Amanda Applegate for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Rachel A. Smith (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University.
Alan Sillars (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Montana.
Ryan P. Chesnut (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is a research and evaluation scientist at the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at the Pennsylvania State University.
Xun Zhu (M.A., Michigan State University) is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University.
ORCID
Rachel A. Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2407-7515