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With divorce rates hovering around 50%, studies are finding that divorce can wreak havoc on a person's health, with the effects being suffered even after remarriage.
Earlier studies show that men who marry enjoy a boost in their health. Studies also show that the death of a spouse has almost the same impact on one's health as divorce.
"That period during the time that this event is taking place is extremely stressful," according to sociologist and director of the center on Aging at the University of Chicago, Linda Waite. "People ignore their health; they're stressed, which is itself a health risk; they're less likely to go to the doctor; they're less likely to exercise; they're sleeping poorly."
Tying the knot is not significantly effective because it's not as easy to bounce back once your health has been affected adversely by divorce. According to Waite, studies indicate that divorce has the same physiological effect as spousal death in that the body interprets this as a traumatic event.
Divorce, being a major turning point in one's life, operates like trauma instead of low-grade stress because of the acuteness of the stress levels surrounding divorce.
The data examined by Waite and mary Elizabeth Hughes (of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) involves analysis of nearly 9,000 adult samplings aged 51 to 61. Of this number, about 20% remarried and almost 22% had filed for divorce without remarrying. According to the research data, divorced and widowed people were 20% more likely to suffer chronic health conditions like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes than those who were currently married. |
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