Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk—down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you’re depressed, according to a new U.S. 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 said. The researchers used a 3,066 person sample and 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 after marriage. “Depressed people may be just especially in need of the intimacy, the emotional closeness and the social support that marriage can provide.” Williams said. On the other hand, if you’re not depressed, marriage could have the opposite effect. 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.

你觉得孤独吗？觉得沮丧吗？去走走吧——走到红地毯上去。根据美国一项新的研究，结婚有益于心理健康，对心情抑郁的人来说更是如此。“实际上，我们的发现跟我们的预计正好相反，”俄亥俄州立大学的社会学博士生阿德里安妮?弗里奇说，她和社会学助理教授克里斯蒂?威廉姆斯一起完成了这项研究。弗里奇说，他们本以为会发现配偶中一方的抑郁状态会对婚姻造成破坏性影响，结果却发现“对别人来说‘我’很重要，这一事实就足以减轻抑郁的症状。”他们找了3,066个人来做研究样本，对他们首次婚姻婚前婚后的抑郁症状——如失眠、长期心情沮丧之类——进行了评估，结果发现那些抑郁者婚后症状减轻的效果要比正常人显著得多。威廉姆斯说：“也许，抑郁者尤其需要婚姻带来的亲密行为、感情上的亲近感和社会支持。”另一方面，如果你原本并不抑郁的话，婚姻就可能会对你造成相反的影响。如果你原本心情不错、赶上的那场婚姻又关系疏远、冲突不断——这种状况与配偶抑郁有关——那你还是保持单身比较好。弗里奇说：“似乎可以这么说，并不抑郁的人结婚是有风险的。要是赶上一个抑郁的结婚对象的话，这笔买卖就不划算了。”