Partners May ‘Share’ Mental Illnesses,Study finds

Ji Lijun/Reviewed Manuscript Edit

According to the science website Science Alert,a large-scale cross-border study covering Taiwan,Denmark and Sweden,analyzing more than 6 million partner data,found that partners in long-term relationships can not only share their living habits,but also “share” mental illnesses. Studies have confirmed that peopleS chances of suffering from the same mental illness as their partners are significantly higher than random expectations. However, Zhang Qingguo, associate professor of epidemiology at NTU, reminded that this study found statistical “correlation” and may not be a causal relationship, so there is more caution in interpretation.

A research team from Taiwan, the United States and Denmark published an observational study in the journal Nature Human Behavior to explore the correlation between mental illnesses between couples. The research team used and analyzed the information of about 5 million spouses in the Taiwan Health Insurance Database after the 1930s, while the information of Nordic countries used more than 570,000 spouses from the Denmark National Registration Office since 1968, and a total of 700,000 spouses from the Swedish National Registration Office.

It was found that the correlation between mental illness between all spouses, whether in Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden, was significantly positively correlated. This means that people with mental illness are more likely to marry someone who also has mental illness.

Zhang Qingguo, associate professor at the Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Taiwan University, at the Taiwan Science and Technology Media Center (SMC) pointed out that this study tells us that the statistical results indicate that the possibility of having mental illness between spouses is higher than that of two random people, but it does not mean that one of the spouses’ mental illnesses will directly lead to mental illnesses of the othre person. More research will still be needed to clarify the risk of mental illnesses brought to the spouse by different mental illnesses. The research results can be applied in the future to make more people pay attention to the mental health of spouses of mental patients and provide more support.

Zhang Qingguo continued to