Men, Women: Mental Boost from Marriage

London – Women, as well as men, benefit from marriage and get a mental health boost from being a couple, new study findings suggest. Research from Australia, which shows that about 13% of married men and women suffer from stress, contradicts the findings of a 1972 study by sociologist Jessie Bernard.

Her study, which looked at anxiety, depression and neurosis in married and unmarried people, found that men reaped the benefits of marriage at the expense of women. „The idea that men benefit from being part of a couple while women suffer all the stress has taken a blow,“ New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. Psychologist David de Vaus, from LaTrobe University in Melbourne, said the difference between his findings and Bernard‘s could be due to the definition of stress and mental disorder, which can manifest itself in men as drug and alcohol abuse. When he studied data from a mental health poll of more than 10,000 adults from a 1996 national survey of mental health in Australia that included substance abuse as an indicator of stress, he found that 25% of single men and women were miserable.

In the female sample, married women with children had the fewest mental health problems. „Psychologists are now debating whether Bernard‘s conclusions have always been flawed, or whether women have become genuinely happier inside marriage over the past 30 years,“ the magazine added. (Reuters)