A couple is seen during a sunset wedding. Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk -- down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you're depressed, according to a new US study. The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study. "We actually found the opposite of what we expected," said Adrianne Frech, a PhD sociology student at Ohio State University who conducted the study with Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology. They expected to find that one spouse's depression weighed too much on the marriage, but "just mattering to someone else can help alleviate symptoms of depression". Frech will present their findings at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Montreal on Sunday. The researchers used a 3,066 person sample that measured symptoms of depression -- such as an inability to sleep, or persistent sadness -- in the same people both before and after their first marriage. They found that depressed people experienced a much more extreme decrease in the incidence of those symptoms. "Depressed people may be just especially in need of the intimacy, the emotional closeness and the social support that marriage can provide ... if you start out happy, you don't have as far to go," Williams said. On the other hand, if you're not depressed, marriage could have the opposite effect, Frech said. People who were happy before getting married and end up in a marriage plagued by distance or conflict -- qualities associated with a depressed spouse -- might be better off single. "It seems right to say that people who are not depressed are at risk, that if they marry a depressed person this could be a bad deal for them," Frech said. (Agencies)

感覺孤獨？情緒低落？那就步入婚姻的殿堂吧！美國最新的一項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，結(jié)婚能夠改善心理健康狀況，對那些抑郁癥患者尤其有效。 婚姻對抑郁癥患者的益處十分明顯，這個發(fā)現(xiàn)令研究小組里的教授和學(xué)生都感到驚訝。 俄亥俄州立大學(xué)社會學(xué)博士阿德里亞諾·弗雷希和社會學(xué)助理教授克里斯季·威廉斯主持了該項研究。弗雷希說：“事實上我們發(fā)現(xiàn)的結(jié)果和預(yù)期完全相反。” 研究人員原本期望證明配偶的抑郁癥會對婚姻產(chǎn)生很大的負(fù)面影響，不料卻發(fā)現(xiàn)“結(jié)婚能夠減輕抑郁癥”。 弗雷希將會在加拿大蒙特利爾召開的美洲社會學(xué)協(xié)會年會上交流他們的研究成果。 科研人員以3066名抑郁癥患者作為研究樣本，他們都有諸如失眠、長期悲傷等抑郁癥狀。研究人員比較了他們第一次婚姻前后的心理狀況。 科研人員發(fā)現(xiàn)抑郁癥患者結(jié)婚后抑郁癥狀大大緩解。威廉斯說，“也許憂郁的人更加需要婚姻所提供的親密關(guān)系、親近的感情以及社會支持。如果你原本就很快樂，那么婚姻對你的影響不會像抑郁癥患者那么明顯。” 不過弗雷希說，對沒有抑郁癥的人來說，婚姻可能會導(dǎo)致相反的結(jié)果。如果一個人婚前很幸福，卻誤入不幸的婚姻之中，夫妻間隔膜很深，爭吵不斷，那么最好獨身。而如果夫妻雙方有一人是抑郁癥患者，這種情況常常出現(xiàn)。 弗雷希說，“似乎可以這樣說，那些沒有抑郁癥的人處于危險之中。如果他們和一位抑郁癥患者結(jié)婚，那么對他們來說這樣的婚姻就比較糟糕。” (英語點津meggie編輯)