A Marriage Therapist's Blog

 

Thoughts on Marriage Counseling

 

Archive for August, 2009


Aug 09

Divorce is Bad for You

By Jay Slupesky
4 Comments
About Marriage Therapy

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before, but that’s OK because (1) it’s interesting and (2) it might influence someone in a good way. According to a study to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, people who had been divorced or widowed had more illness than married people.  The singles suffered 20 percent more chronic health conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer.  The study was done on 9000 adults between the ages of 51 and 61.

To be sure, this study does not prove that divorce causes people to be sicker.  It does show that there is a correlation between the two, though.  The cause could be something else, for example, maybe people who don’t take very good care of themselves physically don’t take very care of their relationships either.

If I can draw that analogy out a little further: when you’re seriously sick, you should see a doctor.  When you relationships is seriously in trouble, you should see a marriage therapist.