High prevalence of mental illness in spouses and partners of those with mental illness

A new study published in BMC Psychiatry suggests that mental health issues in contract holders' spouses are more common if the contract holder has a mental health condition, and even more so if the contract holder has a more serious mental disease.

Mental health illnesses can have a negative impact on relationships and are heritable. Nonetheless, wives and companions of persons with mental illnesses have a significant frequency of mental disease. Ray Merrill's study will look at within- and cross-mental health condition associations in husband-and-wife pairings.

A cross-sectional study methodology was used, with medical claims data from Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators (DMBA) connected to demographic data from employee eligibility files in 2020. The study included 21,027 contract holders aged 18 to 64, with sub-analyses on 16,543 married people. To explain the data, summary statistics, rates, and rate ratios adjusted for age, gender, and dependent child status were produced.

The key findings of this study were as follows:

1.In spouses of contract holders with the same diseases, the percentage of stress is 19.2%, anxiety is 26.4%, and depression is 23.6%.

2.When the contract holder has schizophrenia, the spouse has the highest levels of stress, anxiety, and sadness.

3.Wives of male contract holders experiencing mental health disorders had higher incidence of mental illness than spouses of female contract holders experiencing mental health disorders.

4.After controlling for the contract holder's age, gender, dependent child status, and age difference among husband-and-wife pairs, rates of stress, anxiety, and depression in contract holders' spouses are 2-3 times higher when the contract holder has a mental health issue.

5.However, the size of the observed relationships varies.

6.If the contract holder has schizophrenia, the rate of a spouse having stress is 5.5 times higher, whereas the rate of a spouse having stress is 1.4 times higher if the contract holder has sleep apnea.

In conclusion, the considerably favorable within- and cross-mental disorder associations are most likely the consequence of two forces: symptoms associated with mental health problems (e.g., communication issues, long-term severity, and therapies) exerting pressure on the spouse's mental health and persons choosing a partner like themselves, with comparable social histories. The findings should help healthcare practitioners counsel couples and discuss potential psychological repercussions for kids.

Reference:

Merrill, R. M. (2022). Within- and cross-mental health disorder correlations in husband-and-wife pairs. In BMC Psychiatry (Vol. 22, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04335-x