Date of Award:

5-2013

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Maria C. Norton

Committee

Maria C. Norton

Committee

JoAnn T. Tschanz

Committee

M. Scott DeBerard

Committee

Eric N. Reither

Committee

Anne T. Hunt

Abstract

Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are dramatic public health problems. In recent years, researchers have uncovered evidence demonstrating that chronic stress can lead to these conditions. Because of this, researchers have also investigated whether widowhood, one of the most stressful life events, may also lead to dementia and AD. However, these studies are conflicting, and few have investigated whether the influence of widowhood on dementia and AD varies in different contexts associated with aging and widowhood. For instance, evidence suggests that widowhood may exert greater influence among males and among those with a history of depression. Other such contextual factors include the age at which one is widowed, whether one remarries after widowhood, whether one’s spouse died of natural causes or by accident or suicide, the number and age of children at the time of widowhood, and whether one carries one or more copies of the Apolipoprotein ε4 allele—a genetic factor known to increase risk for dementia and AD. The purpose of this dissertation was to further investigate whether widowhood increased risk for dementia and AD and whether this risk depends on these contextual factors.

This dissertation utilized data from the Cache County Memory Study (CCMS), a large-scale epidemiological study of dementia and AD, and the Utah Population Database, one of the world’s foremost genealogical databases, to assess whether the occurrence of widowhood is related to the timing at which dementia and AD occurs, and to assess whether this relationship varies in different contexts. Findings indicated that widowed persons who are male and widowed persons with a history of severe depression are at increased risk for dementia and AD. These findings may help clinicians identify elderly persons at higher risk for these conditions, and will help epidemiological researchers to better understanding elderly populations.

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6c2ab93250267383ef0f10bf742bb431

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on 5/2013

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