Marital happiness: Married people are less likely to experience depression, a 7-country survey suggests.

Single people are up to 80% more likely to experience symptoms of depression than married people, suggests a survey of more than 100,000 people in 7 countries, published in Nature Human Behavior.

The risk of depression for singles was also found to be higher for men and those with higher educational experience. Studies can help identify groups of people who are at high risk of depression.

Depression is a major public health issue, with approximately 5% of adults worldwide suffering from major depression. Although previous studies have shown that marriage can reduce the risk of depression, these studies often focus on celibate countries (usually in the West).

Furthermore, the results in these studies often differ from country to country, and little is known about the interaction between marital status and other factors, including differences in socioeconomic status, age, and education.

Kefeng Li and colleagues analyzed individual data from 106,556 participants in 7 countries—the US, the UK, Mexico, Ireland, South Korea, China, and Indonesia—to investigate the risk of symptoms. depressed in married and unmarried persons during a follow-up period of 4 to 18 years for a cohort of 20,865 persons. They found that single status was associated with a 79% higher risk of depressive symptoms compared to married.

Divorced or separated people had a 99% greater risk of depressive symptoms, and bereaved people had a 64% greater risk than married people. Single participants in Western countries (including the US, UK and Ireland) had a higher risk of depression than their counterparts in Eastern countries (including South Korea, China and Indonesia). . This risk was found to be greater among unmarried men compared to unmarried women, and among those with higher and lower education.

Li and his colleagues suggest that the low rates of depression among married couples may be due to the exchange of social support within the couple, better access to economic resources and positive influence. to the comfort of another. However, the authors note that a limitation of the study is that data were collected through self-administered questionnaires and not from clinical depression clinics, and that all couples examined in this study were heterosexual. different.