Unmarried and divorced people are more likely to suffer from depression: study

If you want to prevent depression, get married. Research shows that unmarried people are about 80 percent more likely to suffer from depression than married people. Men are likely to be recipients more often than women, as well as those who are much more educated.

The study authors also tried to understand why this is so. They suggest that lower rates of depression among married people can likely be explained by their ability to socially support each other and better access to economic resources. Connecting with someone can also have a positive impact on each other’s well-being.

The discovery is expected to help identify people who are at higher risk of developing depression.

The subjects of the study included more than 100,000 people from seven countries. These include almost 7,000 from the UK. The researchers also took into account the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Study (APMS), conducted in the UK in 2007, in which about 222 people reported having symptoms of depression.

Of these, 73 were married, 62 were single, 55 were divorced or separated, and 32 were widows.

The new study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

“Our cross-country analysis suggests that unmarried people may be at greater risk of depression, and any efforts to reduce this risk must take into account the role of cultural context, gender, educational level and substance use,” Kefeng Li of Macau Polytechnic University in Macau. China, and the team wrote.

The study included people from the United States, Mexico, Ireland, South Korea, China and Indonesia over a follow-up period of four to 18 years.

They found that unmarried people had a 79 percent higher risk of developing depressive symptoms than those who were married. Divorced or separated people had a risk that was as much as 99 percent higher.

People who lost a spouse to death were found to have a 64 percent higher risk than those who were married. According to the study, unmarried people in Western countries had a higher risk of depression than those in Eastern countries.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 280 million people worldwide suffer from depression.