Spouse of Cancer Patients 'Extreme Choice'Highest in 1 year after 1.5x diagnosis
Sep 09, 2024
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In particular, the risk of suicide was highest within 1 year after cancer diagnosis.
According to a study published in August 2024 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the spouse of cancer patients is 1.28 times more likely to die by suicide and 1.47 times more likely to die by suicide than non-cancer spouses.
This study is a cohort study of cancer patients registered in the Danish cancer registration system from 1986 to 2015, comparing 409,338 spouses of cancer patients and 2,046,682 spouses of non-cancer patients during the same period.
The number of suicide attempts by spouses of cancer patients was 62.6 per 100,000 people and 50.5 per 100,000 non-cancer patients. Suicide deaths were also higher in the spouses of cancer patients (16.3 per 100,000) than in the spouses of non-cancer patients (11.4 per 100,000).
This increased risk was most pronounced, especially during the 1 year post-cancer diagnosis. It was the same for the entire period of the 30-year follow-up. The risk of suicide attempts was the highest at 1.45 times within one year after cancer diagnosis, and decreased to 1.35 times between 1 and 8 years, and 1.15 times after 8 years. The risk of suicide death was also 2.26 times within 1 year after cancer diagnosis and 1.40 times for 1 to 8 years.
The risk was high in most carcinomas. In particular, the risk of suicide attempts was highest among spouses with esophageal cancer (2.41 times), and suicide deaths were highest among spouses with pancreatic cancer (3.01 times).
As a result of analyzing each stage of cancer patients, the spouse's suicide attempt was 1.66 times higher in advanced cancer (3rd to 4th stages), 1.28 times higher when the stage was unknown, and 1.10 times higher in Korean and Chinese cancer (1st to 2nd stages). Suicide deaths also showed a similar risk to suicide attempts.
Overall, the risk of suicide attempts and suicide deaths was high in the group with low household income levels.
There are no large-scale studies related to the death of a spouse of cancer patients in Korea yet, but it is not expected to be much different. As of 2020, Denmark's suicide mortality rate was 9.6 per 100,000, lower than the OECD average of 10.7. In Korea, 24.1 people commit suicide per 100,000 people, more than double, so it is estimated that the suicide mortality rate of cancer patients' spouses is also high.
Professor Lee Kang-joon of the Department of Mental Health Medicine at Inje University Ilsan Paik Hospital explained, "The spouse of a cancer patient suffers from not only psychological depression, stress, anxiety, and fear, but also physical burden and financial difficulties while caring." Most of the causes of suicide in Korea are caused by mental health problems, economic life problems, and disease problems, and the spouse of a cancer patient can have a combination of these problems."
In fact, according to the National Police Agency's data that analyzed the motivation for suicide in Korea in 2022, the regular examination problem was the highest at 39.4%. Economic life problems were 22.5%, physical disease problems 17.6%, and family problems 5.4%.
There are also research results supporting this. According to an analysis of medical records of about 2.7 million spouses (average age of 60 years) among Danish and Swedish citizens at Karolinska Medical University in Sweden, spouses of patients diagnosed with cancer are 14% more likely to suffer from mental disorders such as depression, substance abuse, and stress-related disorders than spouses of people who have not been diagnosed with cancer. In this study, the spouse of cancer patients had the highest risk of developing mental disorders at 30% in the first year of cancer diagnosis.
Another study by Harvard Medical School also found that the prevalence of depression in spouses of cancer patients was 16.4% and anxiety was 42.2%.
Lee Kang-joon, a professor of psychiatry at Inje University Ilsan Paik Hospital, said "The most important thing a cancer patient's spouse can do is to keep his seat next to him when he or she is struggling. However, because the process of watching and caring for the suffering of cancer patients is long and difficult, spouses can also develop depression due to excessive burden, and at the same time, a biological lack of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, can increase the risk of suicide due to impulsive control"In particular, families of cancer patients with low household incomes have a higher risk of suicide, so systematic support from the government and local governments is needed to reduce the burden of care psychologically and economically."
Professor Lee Kang-jun also said, `The process of treating cancer is long and difficult, so you have to look far away, and it is important to accept and endure difficult moments. You need to know how you are feeling tough and that those feelings are normal"If you are mentally depressed or physically struggling, it is important to seek help around you or visit a mental health department to consult and receive medication. If you are in a critical situation where a suicide crisis occurs, you can get help from a locally operated 'suicide prevention center' he advised.
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