LifeStyle
Unmarried people more likely to experience depression than those who are married
(Web Desk) – If you want to stave off depression, get married. A study suggests that unmarried people are around 80 per cent more likely to experience depression than those who are married.
Men are likely to be at the receiving end more than women, along with those who are a lot more educated.
The study authors also tried to understand why is it so? They believe that lower rates of depression among married people can likely be attributed to their ability to socially support one another and better access to economic resources. Being with someone can also have a positive influence on each other’s well-being.
The study subjects comprised more than 100,000 people across seven countries. This includes nearly 7,000 from the UK. The researchers also took into account the UK’s 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS), in which around 222 people reported having symptoms of depression.
Of those, 73 were found to be married, 62 were single, 55 were divorced or separated and 32 were widowed.
The new study was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
“Our cross-country analysis suggests that unmarried individuals may be at greater risk of depression, and any efforts to mitigate this risk should consider the roles of cultural context, sex, educational attainment and substance use,” Kefeng Li of Macao Polytechnic University in Macau, China, and team wrote.
The study followed people in the US, Mexico, Ireland, South Korea, China, and Indonesia in a follow-up period ranging from four to 18 years.
They found that unmarried people had a 79 per cent higher risk of suffering from depressive symptoms compared to those who were married. Divorced or separated people had a whopping 99 per cent higher risk.
People who had lost a spouse to death were found to have a 64 per cent higher risk than those who were married. Unmarried people in Western countries had a higher risk of depression than those in Eastern countries, according to the study.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 280 million people suffer from depression worldwide.
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