You Also Married Their Mental Illness

It should come as no surprise that your mental health is affected by who you live with. Studies of married couples have definitively shown that when one individual has mental illness, it negatively impacts their companion’s mental health. The spouses of persons with mental health disorders show symptoms of anxiety and depression as compared to spouses of people without mental illness. Household stress arises when one spouse has limited emotional availability, doesn’t assist with household tasks, doesn’t work, or lacks the desire to socialize. These factors commonly lead to codependence, manipulation, and the risk of a mental health disorder in a spouse or partner.

In a study of depressed women, depression and codependency were strongly correlated and these women tended to deliberately or unconsciously choose relationships with individuals like themselves. These relationships, if they last, tend to worsen. In a large longitudinal study of over 12,000 seniors who had been married for many years, a concordance was found between the depressive symptoms of wives and husbands, and this tended to increase with age.

Large surveys have reported that married individuals with mental health disorders were more likely to divorce and that their children were at increased risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression by early adulthood. Complicating the child-rearing issues, people with more serious mental health disorders are less likely to enter or stay in marriage. Psychologists speculate that they may have greater difficulty with social-emotional reciprocity, back-and-forth conversation, initiating or responding to social interaction, and reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affects.

The problem is not about simply being married or having children. A World Health Organization survey of 34,493 people found that marriage (as opposed to never being married) was associated with a lower risk of first onset of several mental disorders in both males and females. The study found that there was no increased rate of stress, anxiety, or depression for those with a dependent child or many children. Indeed, studies show that people with severe mental illness, such as bipolar disorder, are much less likely to have children.

Sleep disorders also play a critical role in a couple’s mental health. If one spouse has a sleep disorder (usually the male), the other spouse has increased rates of anxiety and depression. It is well known that sleep apnea and related disorders can cause depression. Sometimes, it’s hard to determine which came first since many of the risk factors for sleep apnea overlap with the symptoms of depression. It will not surprise any women to learn that stress, anxiety, and depression rates are noticeably greater for spouses of males with sleep apnea.

Some mental illnesses cause more problems in marriages. Rates of stress, anxiety, and depression in spouses of people with mental illness are two to three times greater. However, the rate of someone having severe mental stress is over five times greater if their spouse has schizophrenia. If a spouse only has sleep apnea, the rate of the other spouse having stress is just a little higher (1.4 times).

Husband and wife age differences also impact mental health in marriages. Husbands generally are 1.84 years older than their wives, but in the United States, men are, on average, about 2.3 years older than their spouses. There is a tendency for men to seek younger women and for women to seek older men. Women often marry older men who are financially better able to care for them, whereas men tend to be attracted to younger women, in part for childbearing reasons and attractiveness. There might be other less obvious reasons. For example, studies have shown that when a husband was younger than his wife, the husband had greater stress and depression; a younger wife, however, did not report greater stress. In contrast, women were not significantly affected by age differences in terms of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Current studies confirm that the rates of mental health disorders in one spouse are greater if the other spouse has a mental illness. The rates are two to three times higher than when not married to someone with a mental illness and are even higher when the mental illness is severe, such as schizophrenia. The significant correlations reported in these studies are likely the result of two forces: the symptoms associated with mental health disorders place a significant strain on the spouse’s mental health and the fact that individuals with a mental disorder are more likely to choose someone like themselves.