Study links parental love, adult health

Tanith L. Balaban Arizona Daily Wildcat Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, neurology and psychiatry along with his wife (not pictured) use UA students to help them research how receiving affection as a child effects their happiness as adults.

Gary Schwartz, a UA professor of psychology, neurology and psychiatry, and his wife, Linda Russek, a UA research associate and a research psychologist at Harvard University Student Health Services, recently presented papers on the subject at a gathering of the American Psychosomatic Society in Santa Fe, N.M.

While most intuitive individuals realize the important role love plays as a vital component of good health, Schwartz said the concept has not been taken seriously by the scientific community.

"There has been very little research done on the relationship between love and health," said Schwartz, whose study was the first of its kind to place love in the title of the paper and be presented to the panel of relatively conservative colleagues.

Schwartz wrote to 50 foundations while seeking research money for the subject, stirring the interest of only one organization.

To conduct the study, the couple used a Harvard study on male undergraduates originally done in the 1950s. Russek and her father, Henry Russek, a cardiologist, followed up on 87 of the men, 35 years later.

Linda Russek and Schwartz said that one premise in energy medicine is that subtle information can be transmitted between people, especially loving individuals.

They said energy cardiology is the study of the heart as a dynamic energy generating system.

Russek said she was inspired to track the cardiac energy that occurs between individuals and was accurate on her prediction that the degree to which people register others' energy would be greater in persons who are more open to interpersonal information.

In the 42-year study, men who had labeled themselves as coming from homes with high parental love showed much higher responses. These subjects were also significantly healthier in late adulthood than the subjects who rated their parents "low in loving," S chwartz said.

Schwartz said the results indicated a strong relationship between levels of consciousness and cardiac energy and patterns of health and illness.

He said the results of the study lead toward a scientific explanation of psychic ability in certain individuals and theories that there is a collective consciousness among groups of people.

"When people are around each other, a relationship between the individuals' brains and heart is occurring through an exchange of energy," he said.

The Harvard study had the students rate their parents on a scale of one to nine on being loving, just, fair, clever, hard-working and strong.

Russek and Schwartz later combined these into two categories: "love and wisdom" and "basic caring."

Nineteen of the 87 men rated their parents low in both categories. And 35 years later, 84 percent of them had diseases like cardiovascular disorders, ulcers or alcoholism.

Of the 41 students who rated their parents high in these categories, 37 percent reported serious diseases.

Family history of disease and marital history, smoking and socio-economic factors were ruled out as explanations to health problems, Schwartz said.

"When you have a sense from early on about you having value, you have more self-confidence and a sense of choices and direction in your life," Russek said.

Individuals who considered themselves deprived of love as a child also have a tendency to be more prone to eating disorders and other addictions, said Patti Haranda, a counselor and an intern in Schwartz's Psychology of Love class.

Students on campus had mixed reactions to Russek and Schwartz's study. Many of the students that were approached for the story felt uncomfortable and declined to comment on the love they received from their parents.

"I guess so, when you're in love, you're happier and it makes you generally feel better," said Heather Schneider, a marketing junior. "Your life feels more fulfilled and there's probably less chance of depression."

Physical science senior Dan Chitwood said, "I think you could maybe relate the amount of love you receive from your parents and how much self-esteem you have."

However, Chitwood said that although he felt he was OK and came from a loving family, his older sister was ill and dealing with several health problems.

Schwartz said perceptions of parental love and the ways parents relate to children often produce varied results within families.