Health and Families

Every family member can influence another family member's health attitudes and behaviors through communication. As stated earlier, conflict amongst spouses can affect physical health. Research on mental health has shown that critical comments from family members predicts the chance of relapse in depression, eating disorders, and schizophrenia (Fiscella and Campell 1999; Franks, Campbell, and Shields 1992). This is important because depression and hostility were associated with poor diet, lack of exercise, and a small chance in increased smoking (Fiscella and Campbell 1999). Kevin Fiscella and Thomas Campbell explained that the enactment of these unhealthy behaviors may represent some attempt to cope with these negative feelings (depression and hostility). After controlling for potentially confounding variables such as age, sex, race, marital status, income, education, and physical health, perceived criticism (not actual criticism) was significantly associated with fat consumption and lack of exercise (Fiscella and Campbell 1999). Other researchers have also found that family criticism is associated with physical health problems such as poor glucose control by patients with type 1 diabetes (Koenigsberg et al. 1993), less success with weight loss (Fischmann-Havstad and Marston 1984), and problems with asthma (Hermanns et al. 1989).