The benefits of marriage appear to be greater for women with bipolar disorder than for men with the disorder, US researchers report.

They note, however, that the extra benefit in women was limited to a reduction in depressive symptoms.

“Mental illnesses in general are responsive to varying levels of social support, and women appear to react more strongly to these variations than men do,” say Daniel Lieberman and colleagues from George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

“The interpersonal and social rhythm therapy literature also suggest that women may benefit more from the increased lifestyle regularity that can be seen in stable marriages.”

The researchers used the National Institute of Mental Health Life Chart Methodology to collect data on episodes of depression, mania, and mixed states from the previous 2 years for 282 individuals (71 men and 211 women) with bipolar disorder.

In all, 28 (39%) of the men and 112 (53%) of the women were married, indicating that women with bipolar disorder were significantly more likely to be married than men with the condition. The remaining study participants had never been married.

Married women had fewer episodes of depression during the past 2 years than never-married women, at 6.1% versus 7.3%, and the cumulative severity of depression was lower, with average depression scores of 11.7 versus 14.5.

Married and unmarried women with bipolar disorder did not differ with regard to diagnostic subtype or age of onset, however.

By contrast, among men, bipolar I disorder was more common among those who had never been married (n=22 versus 9), and unmarried men had an earlier age at onset of bipolar disorder than their married peers (13.6 versus 20.2 years).

But there was no difference between married and unmarried men with bipolar disorders in terms of frequency, duration, or severity of mood episodes.

The researchers suggest in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry that the gender differences in their study may be the “result of potential male spouses placing less weight on bipolar disorder as a selection factor or the illness manifesting itself differently in men and women.”

They conclude: “The finding that women with bipolar disorder may be more sensitive to the benefits of being married than men may be helpful in understanding bipolar disorder in men and women and in developing effective treatment strategies.”

MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a trading division of Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2010

Free abstract

• RISPERDAL(R) CONSTA(R) (Risperidone) Long-Acting Treatment Delayed The Time To Relapse In Patients With Bipolar I Disorder
• Communication Within The Brain Impaired By Genetic Variant With Possible Consequences Schizophrenia Or Manic Depression

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.