Depression and communication processes in later life marriages

Abstract

Objective: About six hundred and fourteen elderly people married to each other, average ages 66 and 63 respectively, in long term, mature marriages, lasting on the average 36 years, completed the Marital Satisfaction Inventory, Revised–MSIr (Snyder, D.K. 1999) and the short version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Kohout, F.J., Berkman, L.F., Evans, D.A., & Cornoni-Huntley, J. (1993). The purpose of this study was to determine whether depression in one or both spouses and poor affective and problem solving communication occur together.

Methods: Husbands and wives were divided into nine groups based on their levels of depression (hlow/wlow, hmed/wmed, hhigh/whigh, hhigh/wlow, hhigh/wmed, wlow/hhigh, and wlow/hmed, hmed/wlow, and hmed/whigh). Analysis of Variance was used to examine the difference in couple affective communication and problem solving scores from the MSIr (1999).

Results: The findings indicated that when husbands or wives are more depressed, both affective communication and problem solving processes are impaired for the couple. When both are depressed, affective communication and problem solving are worse than when only one is depressed, and both husband and wife communication scores are worse when one or both partners is depressed than when neither husband nor wife is depressed.

Conclusion: While these findings do not point to cause, implications for providing mental health services (including marital therapy) or couple based education groups as supports to the depressed elderly and their spouses are recommended.

Keywords:

• depression
• communication patterns
• older couples