Longitudinal associations of marital quality and marital dissolution with the incidence of DSM-III-R disorders

This study examined whether getting divorced was related to the subsequent incidence of DSM-III-R disorders across a 2-year period, controlling for the perceived quality of the marriage prior to the divorce. Data were used from 4,796 adults aged 18 to 64, who had participated in 3 waves (i.e., 1996, 1997, and 1999) of a large-scale epidemiological study conducted in The Netherlands. Results showed that getting divorced was prospectively linked to both the total and new case incidence of alcohol abuse and dysthymia, as well as to the new case incidence of social phobia. Adults who had divorced, however, were not more likely to develop a mental disorder if they had reported low levels of marital quality prior to the divorce. Thus, the marital discord underlying a divorce rather than divorce itself appeared to determine the onset of clinically relevant mental health problems.