In Latino seniors, depressed husband equals slower, more forgetful wife

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Couples long together often end up sharing each other’s quirks, clothes and mannerisms, leading researchers to wonder whether depression in one half of a couple also can degrade the other’s mental functioning over time.

If older Latino couples are typical -- and researchers suspect that in this case they are -- the answer is yes. And no.

Yes, if the husband is depressed -- in which case his wife is more likely to show a decline in cognitive performance than a woman whose husband is not depressed. But a husband whose wife is depressed appears to be mentally none the worse, according to an eight-year study of Latino couples in the Sacramento area. Funded by the National Institute of Aging, the study is published in the latest issue of the journal Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders.

One might guess that a withdrawn, uncommunicative spouse might well leave the other half of a married couple more lonely and isolated -- factors that are strongly linked to mental decline. But why would wives be affected this way but husbands not? Researchers surmise that women might be more emotionally attuned to their spouse’s mental state and more likely to mirror some aspects of a husband’s emotional changes than the reverse. They suggested, too, that in Latino families, a woman’s strong sense of responsibility for her family’s well-being might mean that she shoulders some of her husband’s emotional pain and pays for that intellectually.

The study followed 279 Sacramento-area Latino couples, 60 years of age and older, for as many as eight years. Researchers measured levels of intellectual functioning, depression and several other variables in each member of these couples ever 12 to 18 months. It was part of a larger study called SALSA -- for Sacramento Area Longitudinal Study of Aging.

‘There’s no reason to think the results are unique to the Latino community,’ said Dr. Ladson Hinton, professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine, one of the study’s authors. But he said future research should aim to see whether that pattern holds for other ethnicities, and to explore what other factors -- including the quality of a marriage -- contribute to psychological contagion among longstanding couples.

Depression in men -- and Latino men in particular -- is thought to be greatly under-recognized, possibly because shame and cultural norms make it harder for men to seek help for their condition. That’s why the National Institute on Mental Health has pulled together a resource page for men who feel they may be depressed and their families. And they’re all available in Spanish too.

-- Melissa Healy