The transition from marriage to divorce is what causes stress

The transition from marriage to divorce is what causes stress

By Liz Lockhart

Divorce later in life holds less damage to people’s health than it does for younger people, according to a new study conducted by a Michigan State University sociologist, Hui Liu.

The findings, which appear in the research journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest that older people have more coping skills to deal with the stress of divorce, Liu said.

‘It’s clear to me that we need more social and family support for the younger divorced groups.  This could include divorce counselling to help people handle the stress or offering marital therapy or prevention programmes to maintain marital satisfaction,’ said Liu.

The self-reported health of 1,282 participants in Americans Changing Lives, a long-term national survey, was analyzed by Hui Liu. She measured the differences in health status between those who remained married during the study period of 15 years and those who divorced at certain ages.  She also compared this in different birth generations.

Liu discovered that the gap was broader at younger ages with those who divorced between the ages of 35 and 41 reporting more health problems than those who divorced in the 44 to 50 age range.

‘I would have expected divorce to carry less stress for the younger generation, since divorce is more prevalent for them,’ Liu said. She added that this may be because the pressure to marry and stay married was stronger for older generations and therefore, those who did divorce may have been the most unhappily married.  As a consequence they felt a certain degree of relief when they did divorce.

The study found that, overall, those who divorced experience a more rapid health decline than those who stayed married.  However, those who stayed divorced during the entire study period displayed no difference than those who stayed married.

‘This suggests it is not the status of being married or divorced, per se, that affects health, but instead is the process of transitioning from marriage to divorce that is stressful and hurts health,’ Liu concluded.