Taiwanese Study Finds Spouses of People Hospitalized With Sepsis Are More Vulnerable to Mental Illness

A Taiwanese study found that 23.5 percent of spouses of sepsis patients developed mental illnesses after their partner was discharged from the hospital. Fotolia

Sepsis is the body’s severe reaction to an infection, and it can be a killer. In fact, it’s responsible for one in five deaths worldwide. Sepsis occurs when the germs from an infection invade the bloodstream and cause severe systemic inflammation, often with fever, shortness of breath, unconsciousness, and in severe cases, organ failure and even shock.

But the toll of the life-threatening condition also goes beyond sepsis patients.

The impact of this illness on families is so great that a study in Taiwan found that 23.5 percent of spouses developed mental illnesses after their partner was discharged from the hospital. The risk of this happening was higher among the elderly, women, those with low incomes, and those who had other medical conditions, the study found.

Using data from the Taiwan Health Insurance Database for the years 2003 through 2017, researchers at the Taichung Veterans General Hospital followed 66,715 spouses of sepsis patients for five years after their release from the hospital. They found that 23.5 percent of those spouses, who had no history of psychiatric disorders, developed psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and mood disorders.

The probability of this happening was greater among the spouses of patients with longer hospital stays. Other contributing factors to the onset of mental illness included older age, female gender, low income, and the presence of other medical conditions. The study was published earlier this year in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine.

The researchers said this was the first international study to use population-wide data on mental illness among people who had spouses that had sepsis. The results improved medical understanding of how an illness can affect the mental health of family members.

Older Women at Greater Risk of Depression

An earlier study performed in the United States also showed that older women were at greater risk of depression if their spouse was hospitalized with severe sepsis. The risk increased from 20 percent in the year prior to the spouse’s illness to 34 percent after the illness.

Another study also showed the incidence of depression among caregivers was 22.8 percent to 29 percent after one year of follow-up with patients on ventilators.