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Depression and Marriage Debated

There are always “treatments” and “secrets” to a happy life being touted in self-help and mass-market medias. They key is to know ahead of time that there are no ultimate secrets or quick fixes to the complex issues that govern our lives.

The Huffington Post recently published an article that was written in response to an MSNBC.Com story about marriage and depression. The story written by MSNBC.com was based off interviews surrounding an 18 year study on marriage and depression. The title of story, “New treatment for depression – marriage.” Was misleading and the their story itself taken to task by the Huffington Post.

The people who were classified as depressed were about 20% of the people in the study. The other 80% were the ones who scored just 2 points lower on depression (out of 84) after they married. Here is a comment in the authors’ own words: “Those with average levels of marital happiness who were not depressed prior to marrying do not experience significantly better psychological well-being than their continually never-married counterparts.”

Taking apart the story piece by piece, the HP article continues to question the assumptions that were taken.

Based on an interview with one of the authors, MSNBC suggests that marriage may provide “the companionship and emotional support needed to help alleviate depression.” But if it is companionship and emotional support that is key, then wouldn’t a close and caring friendship provide that?

Get Married, Be Happy – is setting readers up for disappointment and disillusionment. People have their reasons for marrying, but trying out a “new treatment for depression” is unlikely to be one of the sensible ones

Marriage is a beautiful and fulfilling enterprise that can offer life-sustaining support and love, but it should never be touted as a treatment for depression. Depression is a personal disorder that affects so many lives that it should never be treated so lightly.

This article was written by Staff Writer, and posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 4:42 am. It is filed under Therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.