Individual and mutual predictors of marital satisfaction among prostate cancer patients and their spouses

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To determine the individual and mutual predictors of the marital satisfaction of couples in which the husband experienced prostate cancer.

Background: Marital satisfaction of patients with prostate cancer has been insufficiently studied in Asian countries as compared with Western countries.

Design: This study used a prospective and repeated-measures design.

Methods: Seventy Taiwanese couples in which the husband had prostate cancer completed measures at 6 and 12 months post-treatment. Assessments of physical symptoms, marital satisfaction, coping behaviour and psychological distress were made. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the data.

Results: The marital satisfaction of patients with prostate cancer and that of their spouses were significantly correlated. At 6 months, spouses' marital satisfaction, patients' appraisal of prostate cancer as a threat and patients' serum prostate-specific antigen levels were found to be the predictors of patients' marital satisfaction. Furthermore, patients' marital satisfaction and their spouses' psychological distress were predictors of spouses' marital satisfaction. At 12 months, spouses' marital satisfaction and patients' appraisal of prostate cancer as harm were predictors of patients' marital satisfaction. Finally, spouses' marital satisfaction (at 6 months) and appraisal of prostate cancer as a threat were predictors of spouses' marital satisfaction.

Conclusions: At 6 months post-treatment, patients' and spouses' marital satisfaction will influence each other. However, at 12 months, patients' marital satisfaction exerts an insignificant effect on spouses' marital satisfaction. Moreover, patients' serum prostate-specific antigen level or the negative appraisal of prostate cancer affects their marital satisfaction. Spouses' marital satisfaction is affected by psychological distress and their negative appraisal of prostate cancer.

Relevance to clinical practice: The results can be used to develop interventions for prostate cancer couples. Such an intervention can be used to modify couples' appraisal of prostate cancer by changing incorrect thinking or to ease the psychological distress to improve marital satisfaction.

Keywords: appraisal of illness; marital satisfaction; prostate cancer; prostate-specific antigen; psychological distress.