THAT'S MEN:When illness strikes, we all get stressed but women get more stressed than men, writes Padraig O'Morain
WE ALL fear a diagnosis of cancer. Even though so many cancers can be treated successfully, the thought of the "big C" is still scary.
So it's hardly surprising that when a man is diagnosed with cancer, his partner's stress levels also go up.
Typically, the partner sets about managing the man's treatment. His survival becomes her project.
And typically, too, she is the most stressed member of the couple.
It might seem reasonable to assume that if the man has the disease, then he will suffer the greatest stress.
But when researchers from the Netherlands and the US analysed research from around the world, they found that this is not so.
When it's the woman who has the cancer, she is the more distressed of the two. But when it's the man who has the cancer, it is still the woman who is the most distressed.
The level of distress varies from couple to couple. In most couples dealing with a cancer diagnosis, the level of stress is moderate rather than severe as measured by the researchers.
But either way, the stress levels are higher in the woman than in the man, even if it is the man who has the cancer.
Men need to be aware of this for the sake of their partners. But women need to be aware of it too, for the sake of their men.
This is because another piece of research, conducted by the American Cancer Society, found that a partner's distress is bad for you.
The research involved 168 married couples. In every case, either the man or the woman had been diagnosed two years previously with prostate or breast cancer respectively.
Men whose wives were more stressed than themselves reported more physical symptoms, the more distressed their wives were.
These symptoms included backache and headache and were viewed by the researchers as psychosomatic. In other words, their wives' psychological distress added to the emotional stress the men were experiencing.
This emotional stress was expressed through physical symptoms. Indeed, the men with highly stressed wives did not report any emotional problems - the difference was in physical ailments.
But why are the wives more stressed in the first place? This is what we do not know, but I would suggest a couple of contributing factors.
First, if the wives take on the business of dealing with the health service, they are likely to experience extra stress by virtue of that fact alone. The health service is not exactly a well-oiled machine and there are few people who find it a pleasure to deal with.
Second, we men don't necessarily co-operate with our treatment. Getting us to take the right medication at the right time, to stick to a healthy but grim diet and so on, is far from easy.
Insofar as women undertake to manage their men through an illness, they can expect to meet frustration and stress in doing so.
This effect holds true also if it is the woman who has cancer and if she is highly stressed by this fact. Again, the husband will report more headache and back pain in such a situation.
And the research mentioned at the start of this article shows that women are more highly stressed than men about their own cancer also.
That research was conducted by the University Medical Centre, Groningen and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The researchers analysed the results of 43 studies.
All of this suggests that reducing the stress levels of female partners in these situations is good for them and for their men.
The ramifications of an illness go far beyond the person who experiences it, and we need to respond to this fact.
While men have a role to play by co-operating with their treatment regimes, women need to make a point of taking care of themselves too. Asking for help from others so that you can take time to de-stress may feel selfish, but it's actually good for everybody in the relationship.
People may praise you for being a martyr, but it's no fun being a martyr and it's not much fun being around one either. And it can damage your health.
• Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor. His book, That's Men - the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas