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Marital quality, gender, and biomarkers of disease risk in the MIDUS cohort

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Title	Marital quality, gender, and biomarkers of disease risk in the MIDUS cohort
Author	Donoho, Carrie Joy
Author email	carriedonoho@gmail.com;carriedonoho@gmail.com
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Document type	Dissertation
Degree program	Gerontology
School	Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
Date defended/completed	2012-10-09
Date submitted	2012-11-11
Date approved	2012-11-12
Restricted until	2012-11-12
Date published	2012-11-12
Advisor (committee chair)	Crimmins, Eileen
Advisor (committee member)	Azen, Stanley Gruenewald, Tara Abdou, Cleopatra
Abstract	This dissertation aims to elucidate the psychosocial and physiological mechanisms through which marriage affects health outcomes and disease processes by linking measures of marital quality (satisfaction, support, strain, disagreement) to physiological mechanisms that have been associated with psychosocial factors and adverse health outcomes: inflammation, neural regulation of the heart, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. Data from the National Survey of Midlife in the United States are used, utilizing the main survey, the biomarker substudy, and the daily diary study. Higher spousal strain was weakly associated with higher inflammation among men and women, and that higher spousal support was associated with lower levels of inflammation among women, but not men. Higher levels of spousal strain and disagreement were associated with lower heart rate variability, and that higher levels of marital satisfaction and spousal support were associated with higher HRV. Men with higher levels of marital strain and disagreement have lower waking values of cortisol and greater cortisol awakening responses, with some indication of greater decreases in cortisol in the early evening, but higher values in the later evening. However, for women marital quality was not associated with differences in cortisol secretory patterns over the day. Taken together, these empirical papers show the importance of marital quality for understanding the health of the married. In general, the studies from this dissertation highlight the fact that there is heterogeneity in the health of the married. Individuals in good marriages (i.e., low in negative characteristics and/or high in positive characteristics) tend to appear healthier than those in bad marriages (i.e., high in negative characteristics and/or low in positive characteristics).
Keyword	cortisol; heart rate variability; inflammation; marriage; social support
Language	English
Part of collection	University of Southern California dissertations and theses
Publisher (of the original version)	University of Southern California
Place of publication (of the original version)	Los Angeles, California
Publisher (of the digital version)	University of Southern California. Libraries
Provenance	Electronically uploaded by the author
Type	texts
Legacy record ID	usctheses-m
Rights	Donoho, Carrie Joy
Access conditions	The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.
Repository name	University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository address	USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA
Repository email	cisadmin@usc.edu
Archival file	uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-DonohoCarr-1282.pdf