Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds
15 days ago
- #mental health
- #marriage patterns
- #psychiatric disorders
- People with psychiatric disorders are more likely to marry someone with the same condition than someone without.
- The study analyzed data from over 14.8 million people in Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden, covering nine psychiatric disorders.
- Spouses were more likely to share the same psychiatric condition than to have different ones.
- The trend was consistent across countries, cultures, and generations, with slight increases in recent decades.
- Only OCD, bipolar disorder, and anorexia nervosa showed different patterns across countries.
- Three theories explain the trend: attraction to similar individuals, shared environment, and societal stigma.
- Social and environmental stressors may contribute to new diagnoses in previously unaffected partners.