Psychiatric Illness???marital Units and Divorce

This is the third in a series of reports from a controlled study of divorce. Using only marital units in which both members of the unit were interviewed, 40 divorced couples and 28 control couples, we found that the frequency of occurrence of a psychiatric disorder in one or both members of the units was significantly greater for the divorced couples (92 per cent vs. 43 per cent respectively, p<.001). Control marriages in which divorce had been considered or separations had occurred had an increased frequency of psychiatric illness when compared to those control marriages in which the above had not occurred. No evidence was found that our subjects with one psychiatric disorder necessarily married and/or divorced a person with the same, or different, psychiatric diagnosis. There were discrepancies in the reporting of symptoms of psychiatric illness for the divorced probands when the probands' interviews were compared to the psychiatric symptoms reported for them by their interviewed ex-spouses. The ex-husbands reported fewer symptoms of depressive illness for their ex-wives, and the ex-wives reported more symptoms of excessive drinking for their ex-husbands than were found when interviewing the divorced probands themselves. Information obtained from our divorced probands indicates that the incidence of psychiatric illness is approximately the same in their ex-spouses not interviewed as in the interviewed divorced probands. However, a greater proportion of these noninterviewed ex-spouses were antisocial personalities than were the interviewed divorced probands.