RESEARCH REPORT

Partnership history and mental health over time

M Willitts¹, M Benzeval¹ and S Stansfeld²

¹ Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK
² Department of Psychiatry, Barts and the London Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Michaela Benzeval
Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK; m.benzeval{at}qmw.ac.uk

Study objective: To describe the mental health of men and women with differing histories of partnership transitions.

Design: Data from nine waves of the British Household Panel Survey, a stratified general population sample, were used to calculate age standardised ratios and 95% confidence intervals for mean General Health Questionnaire scores for groups with different partnership transition histories.

Participants:2127 men and 2303 women aged under 65 who provided full interviews at every survey wave.

Main results: Enduring first partnerships were associated with good mental health. Partnership splits were associated with poorer mental health, although the reformation of partnerships partially reversed this. Cohabiting was more beneficial to men’s mental health, whereas marriage was more beneficial to women’s mental health. The more recently a partnership split had occurred the greater the negative outcome for mental health. Women seemed more adversely affected by multiple partnership transitions and to take longer to recover from partnership splits than men. Single women had good mental health relative to other women but the same was not true for single men relative to other male partnership groups.

Conclusions: Partnership was protective of mental health. Mental health was worse immediately after partnership splits, and the negative outcomes for health were longer lasting in women. Future work should consider other factors that may mediate, confound, or jointly determine the relation between partnership change and health.

Keywords: partnership; health; longitudinal

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

On air pollution and inequalities, environmental justice, and the public health

Carlos Alvarez-Dardet and John R Ashton
J Epidemiol Community Health 2004 58: 1. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Poortman, A.-R. (2007). The First Cut is the Deepest? The Role of the Relationship Career for Union Formation. Eur Sociol Rev 23: 585-598 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Joutsenniemi, K., Martelin, T., Martikainen, P., Pirkola, S., Koskinen, S. (2006). Living arrangements and mental health in Finland.. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 60: 468-475 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Tiffin, P. A, Pearce, M. S, Parker, L. (2005). Social mobility over the lifecourse and self reported mental health at age 50: prospective cohort study. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 59: 870-872 [Abstract] [Full Text]