ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2021
Take a sad song and make it better: Spousal activity limitations, caregiving, and depressive symptoms among couples.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Health consequences of spousal health shocks: evidence from a matched event study in the United States.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Spousal concordance and interdependence in depression among older adults: A cross-cultural longitudinal study in China, the United States, and England.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Caring for and Caring about in Economic Evaluation: Modelling the Family and Caregiving Effects.PharmacoEconomics · 2026Article
- Article
- Spousal multimorbidity and depressive symptoms among older Indian couples: Do one's own health status and sex matter?GeroScience · 2024Article
- Revisiting the caregiver stress process: Does family caregiving really lead to worse mental health outcomes?Advances in life course research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesFramed around key concepts of the life course perspective, we examined the linkages between spousal activity limitations, caregiving transitions, and depression among married couples. The key study objectives were 1) to demonstrate how the caregiving-depression link widely reported in earlier research may have been over-stated, and 2) to investigate whether caregiving yields mental health benefits by weakening the link between spousal activity limitations and depressive symptoms.
methodsWe used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (2004-2016) to examine a national sample of coupled individuals (6,475 couples; 57,844 person-wave observations). A series of longitudinal actor-partner interdependence models were used to estimate within-person associations between spousal activity limitations, caregiving transitions, and depressive symptoms among coupled individuals.
resultsFindings demonstrated that spousal activity limitations function as a confounder for the association between caregiving transitions and depressive symptoms. Results further provided evidence that transitioning into a caregiving role in the context of spousal activity limitations alleviated symptoms of depression for the caregiver.
conclusionThe findings provide an explanation for the extended longevity benefit reaped by caregivers increasingly reported in recent population studies. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.