People facing stress in their married life are at a higher risk of suffering from depression, a new study finds.
As blissful as a married life seems, it comes with its own set of baggage. Of late, various studies have highlighted the benefits of getting married like enjoying a longer, healthier and better quality life. University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers decided to look into the other side of the coin and found that marital stress actually increases the risk of depression.
The study was part of the National Institute on Aging-funded Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) and led by Carol Ryff, director of the Institute on Aging at UW-Madison. He and his team recruited married adult participants to complete questionnaires rating their stress on a six-point scale. They were asked questions like how often they felt let down by their partner or how frequently their spouse criticized them. They were also evaluated for depression.
Nine years later, all participants were asked to answer similar questions. Two years after this, all were invited to the laboratory to undergo emotional response testing, a means of measuring their resilience. They were showed 90 pictures of negative, neutral and positive people. During this, the researchers measured the electrical activity of the corrugator supercilii to assess the intensity and duration of the participants' response. This experiment is also used to determine symptoms of depression.
Researchers found that study participants who reported higher marital stress had shorter responses to positive images than those reporting more satisfaction in their unions. There was no significant difference in the timing of negative responses.
Ryff hopes that the findings of this study can help researchers understand what makes some people more vulnerable to mental and emotional health challenges.
"This is not an obvious consequence, if you will, of marital stress, but it's one I think is extraordinarily important because of the cascade of changes that may be associated," said Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the UW's Waisman Center in a statement. "This is the signature of an emotional style that reveals vulnerability to depression."
By understanding the mechanisms that make individuals more prone to depression and other emotional disturbances, Davidson is hoping to find tools such as meditation to stop it from happening in the first place.
The study was published in the April 2014 Journal of Psychophysiology.
