Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02772-8

by rntn • 11 months ago

41 16 11 months ago

tengbretson• 11 months ago

The team found that when one partner was diagnosed with one of the nine conditions, the other was significantly more likely to be diagnosed with the same or another psychiatric condition.
People with a psychiatric disorder are more likely to marry someone who has the same condition than to partner with someone who doesn’t, according to a massive study

Or...

exe342• 11 months ago

are you suggesting it's transmissible? i.e correlation implies causation?

estearum4• 11 months ago

https://thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/113/3/article-p...

Alzheimer's isn't in the set they're looking at here, but a curious data point is that neurosurgeons die of Alzheimer's at ~2.5x the rate of the general public.

There's definitely a live hypothesis that it's caused by some type of transmissible infection.

more_corn• 11 months ago

There have been indications that a fecal transplant can treat schizophrenia. We may be heavily influenced by our intestinal flora which is in turn influenced by our diet and environment which we share with a spouse.

bikenaga• 11 months ago

Well, there are lots of possibilities.

"For most disorders, the chances of partners sharing a diagnosis increased slightly with each decade, particularly for those with disorders related to substance use."

"Although the study did not investigate what causes the phenomenon, Fan says three theories could help to explain it. First, people might be attracted to those who resemble them. 'Perhaps they better understand each other due to shared suffering, so they attract each other,' he says.

Second, a shared environment could make partners more alike — a process known as convergence. And third, the societal stigma of having a psychiatric disorder narrows a person’s choice of spouse."

seism• 11 months ago

Hence, couples / group therapy.

fcarraldo• 11 months ago

What does `significantly` imply here, numerically? The numbers seem to be behind the paywall.

gepiti• 11 months ago

People pair with others who have similar traits or traits they are used to (ie raised by a parent with this trait). Others pair with people who display traits they "need".

Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds

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