Journal
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Volume 20, Issue 3, Pages 355-371Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0265407503020003005
Keywords
depression; longitudinal study; marriage
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Much evidence suggests that marital discord is related to depressive symptoms in married couples. In the present research, potential sex-related differences in the prospective effect of marital discord on depression were explored. Further, extending previous work, cross-spouse effects (i.e., the associations between one spouse's marital discord and his or her partner's later levels of depressive symptoms) were examined. Spouses from randomly sampled married couples (N = 166) with adolescent children provided reports of their marital quality and depressive symptoms at baseline and one year later. Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted. Results revealed that Time 1 marital quality was associated with Time 2 depressive symptoms, the magnitude of this effect was similar for both husbands and wives, and spouses' own marital quality at Time 1 predicted their partners' Time 2 depressive symptoms net of other predictors in the model. Implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed.
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