14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new investigation whose findings have recently been published in the Journal of Psychophysiology, folks who experience marital stress are likely to be more vulnerable to depression.
In their paper in the Journal of Psychophysiology, specialists with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their fellow researchers argue that, as shown by evidence at hand, people exposed to chronic marital stress often have trouble savoring positive experiences.
They go on to explain that this issue has been documented to be a hallmark of depression, and add that, as far as they could tell, marital stress can foster several other depression symptoms.
As part of their investigation into how chronic marital stress influences depression risk, the specialists monitored several married adult volunteers for over a decade, Science News informs.
At first, the participants to this study were asked to complete questionnaires intended to rate their stress on a six-point scale, and were also evaluated for signs of depressions, the same source details.
About 9 years later, the volunteers once again filled in these questionnaires and their mental health was assessed, and, in year 11, the participants were subjected to so-called emotional response testing.
Long story short, they were shown a series of 90 images, of which some were negative and some were neutral or positive. While the volunteers were looking at these photos, the specialists measured the intensity and the duration of their response to them.
It was thus determined that, although the duration of the response to negative images was roughly the same in the case of participants who had reported marital stress and those who had not, folks who were not all that happily married had shorter-lived responses to positive images.
Study leader Richard Davidson explains that, now that there is evidence to indicate that marital stress can make people more prone to depression, it might be possible to use this piece of information to gain a better understanding of what makes some folks more vulnerable to mental and emotional issues.
“This is not an obvious consequence, if you will, of marital stress, but it's one I think is extraordinarily important because of the cascade of changes that may be associated. This is the signature of an emotional style that reveals vulnerability to depression,” the specialist said in a statement.
The researchers hope that, by building on the information obtained while studying marital stress and its potential impact on an individual's wellbeing, it might be possible to gain a better insight into how other common stressors that people are exposed to on a daily basis can, under circumstances, lead to depression and other similar conditions.