Spouses of patients receiving hospice for three or more days more frequently reported reduced depression symptoms, compared to surviving spouses of patients who did not receive hospice, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published online today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
This is the first national study to examine depressive symptoms as an outcome for spouses of people with all types of serious illnesses that used hospice care, which is designed to improve quality of life as opposed to offering "curative" disease treatments. Until now, studies demonstrating the benefits of hospice use on caregivers have been largely limited to cancer patients and their families, but hospice use has increased among those with other life-limiting illnesses. Currently, forty-five percent ofterminally ill patients in the U.S. die while receiving hospice care—an increase of more than 20 percent over the past decade.
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