Is marriage good for your mental health? Shocking study reveals how having a spouse impacts happiness
Put a ring on it — not for the heck of it, but for your health.
Singletons around the globe are in greater danger of experiencing mental health issues than their hitched peers, a new study has found.
“Our analysis revealed that unmarried individuals had a higher risk of depressive symptoms than their married counterparts across all countries,” wrote the authors of the new study, published Tuesday in the Nature Human Behavior journal.
The research team, including Cuicui Wang of Harvard University, analyzed data from 106,556 participants in seven nations — the US, UK, Mexico, Ireland, Korea, China and Indonesia — to determine a correlation between depression and marital status.
Deemed a pressing public health issue, depression currently has an estimated prevalence of 5% among adults worldwide. Its damaging reach is likely to increase to over 10% by 2025.
Investigators found that unmarried folks are 79% more likely to become depressed than people who are wed.
Just as alarming, widows are at a 64% risk of grappling with the chronic condition, while divorcees have a 99% higher likelihood of suffering depression when compared to happily wedded sweethearts.
And, sadly for singles, it seems the findings are spot on.
Recent data published in Global Epidemiology revealed that marriage helps reduce death rates by a third for females.
Shockingly, a separate study suggested that even unhappily married mates enjoy better health than solo rollers.
“Marital/cohabitating relationships [are] inversely related to HbA1c levels regardless of dimensions of spousal support or strain,” said probers, revealing that partnership — whether sexy or stale — keeps blood sugar levels low.
Wang and her co-authors added that the health benefits of marriage may include enhanced access to economic resources, the exchange of social support and the positive influence of spouses on each other’s mental well-being.
For singletons, however, the risk of depression was the highest for residents in Western countries — such as the US, UK and Ireland — than those in Eastern countries like China, Korea and Indonesia. But, according to the research, alcohol intake increased later depressive symptom risks among single, widowed, and divorced or separated Chinese, Korean and Mexican participants.
The study results notwithstanding, New York’s eldest living citizen recently told The Post that staying footloose and fancy-free is her key to longevity.
“That’s why I am living. That’s why I am OK because I didn’t get married,” said Louise Jean Signore, of the Bronx, just ahead of her 112th birthday in August. “No marriage, no children.”
“I’d rather be single.”
