Unhappy Marriage Linked to Depression

A stressful marriage can lead to depression, according to a new study.

Previous research has shown that happily married people tend to have lower risk of heart disease and that marital status is linked to cancer survival. The latest study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers shows that marital problems can make people more vulnerable to depression.

According to researchers, the study could help with early diagnosis of depression.

"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 Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the UW's Waisman Center, according to a news release. "This is the signature of an emotional style that reveals vulnerability to depression."

Everyone has that occasional "feeling blue" moment. However, people with depression experience high levels of sadness and anxiety that start interfering with daily activities. Around one in ten adults in the U.S. suffer from depression.

The current research was part of the National Institute on Aging-funded Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study.

Participants' stress levels at the start of the study were assessed using questionnaires. Roughly nine years later, their stress and depression levels were checked again.

In the 11^th year of the study, participants were asked to undergo emotional response testing, which measured their resilience. In the test, people were shown negative, neutral and positive photographs. The idea was to test how quickly the person responds to emotions.

Past research has shown that depressed people don't pay attention to positive images.

In the present study, people with marital stress had shorter responses to positive images. However, there was no difference in participants' responses to negative pictures.

Davidson said that exploring how unhappy marriage makes people unresponsive to positive emotions could help design intervention strategies. He said that meditation could probably be used to help people cope with emotional disturbances.

"How we can use simple interventions to actually change this response?" he asks. "What can we do to learn to cultivate a more resilient emotional style?"

The study is published in the journal Psychophysiology.