A new divorce study making the rounds on Huffington Post and other sites has found that filing for divorce isn’t the big depression trigger that many in the general population thought.
The study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, found that divorce can increase the risk of depression in some people — namely those who’ve already had depression episodes throughout their lives — while leaving others largely unaffected.
Depressive Episodes
Authors of the study discovered that close to 60 percent of persons divorced during the study, who had reported previous “depressive episodes” admitted a post-divorce reoccurrence. Compare this to people in the study without a history of depression, who reported a post-divorce depressive episode just 10 percent of the time.
David Sbarra, lead researcher from the University of Arizona, said in a press release that the study shows a majority of people can recover without sinking into severe cases of depression once the divorce papers have been signed.
“It is very important for clinicians to know that a person’s history of depression is directly related to whether or not they will experience a depressive episode following the end of marriage,” said Sbarra. “People with a history of depression who become divorced deserve special attention for support and counseling services.”
Antidepressant Spike And Suicidal Thoughts
The latest findings are interesting when stacked up against a couple of other recent studies — particularly one in Finland that found a spike in antidepressant use in the moments leading up to divorce and a 2011 study indicating children of divorce are more likely to report suicidal thoughts.
In the first study, both males and females who got a divorce, increased their use of antidepressants four years before the date of divorce. Drug use hit its maximum a few months before the date of divorce before rescinding after the divorce had been finalized.
As for the second study, it revealed men, who witnessed their parents divorce prior to the age of 18, were three times as likely to have thought seriously about suicide as those whose parents had stayed together, according to The Daily Mail.
Women were twice as likely.
As an online divorce service, whose clients are typically seeking a non-conflicting, uncontested dissolution of marriage, MyDivorcePapers.com still sees that the effects of even a clean divorce can cause mental stress and anguish. If you fear that you may be sinking into depression, even if you have no prior history, your best course of action is to tell your doctor and see about getting a diagnosis.
I also think that it depends on the severity of the divorce or the cause of the divorce. It would really be devastating on anyone’s side if the divorce was because of adulterous acts. That could possibly lead to depression.