People who suffer from a psychiatric disorder tend to marry: this is the conclusion to which a vast study has come that analyzed the data relating to almost 15 million people from Taiwan, Denmark and Sweden.
This trend, already detected by experts in the countries of northern Europe, would seem to be independent of culture, state of origin and age. The details of what has been discovered were published on Nature Human Behaviour.
Each participant suffered from one of nine different psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, adhd, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia nervosa or substances use.
The investigation highlighted that when a partner suffered from one of these diseases, often the same had been diagnosed with the same or another disorder.
Why? The study did not investigate why of the phenomenon, but Chun Chieh Fan, one of the authors, advances three possible explanations: the first is that we are attracted to those who look like us;
The second is that sharing the environment in which you live could make partners similar, a phenomenon known by the name of convergence; Finally, the social stigma that affects those suffering from a psychiatric disorder, which narrows the field of choice of a partner, could also play an important role.
The genetic question. A last important detail highlighted by the study concerns the genetic question: since the genes are involved in the development of psychiatric disorders, the tendency of people to choose partners with similar disorders increases the risk that they pass on to subsequent generations.
The researchers have in fact discovered that the children of parents with the same disorder have twice the chances of developing that disorder compared to children who only have a sick parent.
