Research on chronic pain patients' perceived spousal responses suggests that these responses can be categorized into three groups: solicitous responses, punishing responses, and distracting responses. Combinations of these responses have been found to interact with marital satisfaction to affect pain severity and depressive symptomatology. Researchers have increasingly started conducting cross-cultural research examining management of chronic diseases, highlighting the fact that culture defines how individuals respond to chronic diseases. However, these findings have yet to be incorporated into the mainstream chronic pain literature. The proposed study seeks to integrate the literature on spousal response to chronic pain with cultural-based findings on disease management into an examination of the role of culture/ethnicity in mediating the influence of perceived spousal responses on pain severity and depressive symptomatology. Hispanics males who are married will be the primary focus of this study.
