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Stressed marriage tied to depression: Is that really surprising?

On behalf of Stange Law Firm, PC posted in Divorce on Monday, May 12, 2014.

It seems as simple as this, really: Whether you would be surprised by the central finding of a recently released study on marriage would seemingly depend on whether you were ever involved in a long-tenured marriage marked by significant stress.

The study comes courtesy of a research team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that took a close and long look at 116 couples — both married and cohabiting — over a decade-plus term.

Their central line of inquiry was this: Is there a discernible link between marital stress and depression?

The answer, which a number of people in Illinois, Missouri and nationally might find less than surprising and perhaps a bit underwhelming, was an emphatic positive: Yes, couples that showed marked levels of enduring stress over a number of years together also provided researchers with evidence that they have a comparatively hard time spotting the positive aspects in various stimuli.

Even though a principal member of the UW-Madison research team termed the results “extraordinarily important,” the central conclusion might somehow strike a lot of readers as being marked by less than a resounding drum roll.

In fact, linking long-term stress in a marriage with a heightened vulnerability for depressive symptoms probably doesn’t seem like much of a surprise to many people at all; in fact, it seems more akin to a certainty.

In fact, and in many cases, it seems a strong indicator of divorce.

Common physical symptoms of depression that might be present in some trouble marriages include one or both partners experiencing headaches, fatigue, loss of appetite, weight fluctuations, chest pain and sleeping problems.

Source: Huffington Post, “Stressful marriages linked to depression in new study,” Taryn Hillin, April 28, 2014

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