Daily negative interactions and mood among patients and partners dealing with multiple sclerosis (MS): The moderating effects of emotional support
Section snippets
Main text
The beneficial effects of being involved in a supportive relationship for well-being in general (e.g. Burman & Margolin, 1992) as well as for adjustment to chronic illness (e.g. Cutrona, 1996) have been well documented. Unfortunately, besides being supportive, interactions with the partner can also be problematic and the detrimental effects of problematic or negative interactions are believed to be more important than the beneficial effects of supportive interactions (Manne, Taylor, Dougherty,
Participants
MS patients and their intimate partners were approached via one MS centre and the neurology department of one hospital in the Netherlands. MS patients who were registered in the patient files of these clinics received a letter including information about the study and a description of the inclusion criteria. As information on inclusion criteria were not available from the patient files (e.g. we did not know how many of these patients had a partner), we distributed letters to all 390 patients
Descriptive analyses
Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations of the key study variables. Across the 14-day period, 18 patients (30%) and 13 partners (21%) did not report receiving negative responses from their partner. The mean number of days that patients or partners reported receiving negative responses was 2.6 (range 0–11) and 3.8 (range 0–13), respectively. Thus, across the 14-day period, partners reported more days on which they received negative responses from their ill partner than patients (p
Discussion
The present study examined daily received negative responses in MS patients and their intimate partners. First, the relation between daily received negative responses from the partner and end-of-day mood was examined. Second, the moderating role of receiving emotional support on the same day was addressed. An important feature of the study was the use of a diary method which allowed us to investigate the effects of negative responses within-persons over time.
In line with other studies, both
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Martine van Tent for her help with the data collection and Jan Koopman for developing the software for the electronic diaries.
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