Spousal bereavement, mortality and risk of negative health outcomes among older adults: a population-based study

Lucas Morin; Jonas W Wastesson; Stefan Fors; Neda Agahi; Kristina Johnell

We identified a total of 42 918 older adults who experienced spousal loss during the study period and met our inclusion criteria, matched 1:1 to an equal number of married controls. The proportion of women in each group was 68.4% and the mean age was 78.9 (SD 7.2) years. We identified 18 and 9 persons in same-sex relationships among bereaved cases and married controls, respectively. Baseline characteristics were similar across groups ( Table 1) , although bereaved older adults were more likely to have a history of diabetes (13.7% vs. 12.6%), to be prescribed ≥5 concurrent drugs (56.6% vs. 55.2%), to have a lower level of education (37.9% vs. 33.5%), and to be living in more socially deprived areas (30.0% vs. 27.0%) than their married counterparts. They were also more likely to have a prior history of smoking-related cancer (3.6% vs. 3.1%), alcohol-related disease (0.7% vs. 0.4%) or depression and mood disorders (2.0% vs 1.7%). During follow-up, 87 bereaved cases and 48 married controls emigrated from Sweden. The characteristics of long-time widowed controls (n=42 918) were found to be similar to that of the bereaved cases, as reported in Supplementary table S7. Figure S1 .