Are men more likely to leave an ill spouse?

Women diagnosed with cancer or multiple sclerosis are over six times more likely to be divorced than men with the same diagnosis, according to a new study co-authored by a former researcher at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

And while none of the study subjects came from Utah hospitals, the results come as no surprise to an experienced local psychotherapist, who has seen the pattern replicated here despite the fact that Utahns place a high value on marriage and family support.

Dr. Marc Chamberlain, chief of the division of neuro-oncology at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, said the study was undertaken after he and Dr. Michael Glantz, a fellow neurologist and former Huntsman researcher, noticed that several of their female patients experienced a divorce after their cancer diagnosis.

Published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cancer, the survey of 515 married patients showed that while people with cancer were no more likely to divorce than the general population, for those whose marriages do end after diagnosis, "the woman was the affected spouse in nearly 90 percent of (those) separations."

"We don't actually know whether the patients were in discord or distress already, but we know they were married at the time of entry into the study (upon diagnosis)," Chamberlain said. "We have no idea whether there was any pre-existing discord."

Researchers also found that patients who had a long-term marriage also had a better chance of keeping their marriage intact, whether male or female.

Study subjects were treated at cancer centers based at the University of Massachusetts, Stanford and the University of Southern California, "which are fairly representative of America, but not necessarily African Americans, Asians or South Americans. So we're really looking at white, European-Caucasian bias," Chamberlain said.

Researchers did not survey for a family history of divorce or for religious affiliation, he said, so it isn't known whether those factors would have an impact on survey results.

The study may or may not be "relevant to Salt Lake City" or the population in Utah, he said. "You have a different community than many places in America and this may not be reflective of a community that has such a large faith-driven culture."

But Thomas Harrison, a local psychotherapist who has taught at the University of Utah Medical School and worked with conflict resolution and divorce mediation since 1977, said the study results ring true to his observations of how a sector of local men and women deal with the major medical problems.

He agrees with the study's assessment that because of the strength of the correlation between being female and the chance of divorce after diagnosis, "these findings apply generally to patients with life-altering medical illness."