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If this so-called "marital resemblance" for a range of psychiatric features present, non-random mating, which is the tendency of people with similar characteristics to marry or procreate, could have implications for understanding the transmission and persistence of psychiatric illnesses.
In a new study published online by JAMA Psychiatry, Ashley E. Nordsletten, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and coauthors sought to quantify the nature and extent of non-random mating within and across a broad range of 11 major psychiatric disorders.
The study used Swedish population registers and participants were Swedish residents with a psychiatric diagnosis. The authors report that nonrandom mating was widespread in psychiatric populations both within and across psychiatric disorders. "This phenomenon, which is not observed in nonpsychiatric populations, may hold important implications for how we understand the familial transmission of these conditions and the ubiquity of comorbidity and complex symptoms in clinical populations," the study concludes.
Category(s):Couple Counseling, Marital Counseling, Relationships & Marriage
Source material from JAMA Psychiatry
