ArticleNature human behaviour2024
Association and causal mediation between marital status and depression in seven countries.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Prevalence and Predictors of Depressive Symptom Trajectories in Older Adults: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2026Pooled it
- Impact of occupational sedentary behavior on mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- Higher adherence to a Nordic diet is associated with reduced risk of mild depressive symptoms: a population-based analysis.European journal of nutrition · 2026Article
- Social Media Use Soon After Waking and Depression Among U.S. Adults.Journal of prevention (2022) · 2026Article
- Sustained moderate to high triglyceride-glucose index level is associated with a lower risk of sarcopenia in middle-aged and elderly adults: a nationally representative cohort study.Lipids in health and disease · 2026Article
- Prevalence and Associated Risk Factors for Anxiety, Depression, and Insomnia Among University Students in Bangladesh: A Cross-Sectional Study.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Association and mediating pathways between intergenerational educational mobility and depressive symptoms: findings from high- and middle-income countries.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Mental health under gender imbalance: evidence from bachelors in urban China.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Article
- Relationship status and the neurobehavioral symptoms of multiple sclerosis: a cross-sectional analysis.Journal of neurology · 2026Article
- Friend and Confidant Thresholds: Social Network Size as a Mediator Between Marital Status and Major Depressive Disorder.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Mental health outcomes among United States remote-eligible working adults post COVID-19: national evidence.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Depression among married individuals: new evidence in Türkiye.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Associations Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Prenatal Depression Mediated Through Family Communication in Chinese Pregnant Women: Causal Mediation Analysis.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Difficulties in Accepting the Past as a Mediator between Perfectionism and Symptoms of Depression among University Students in Yazd.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2026Article
- The role of social and genetic factors in partnership trajectories and later life health.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Heatwave exposure and sarcopenia progression among middle-aged and older adults: the longitudinal evidence from CHARLS.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2025Article
- An interpretable machine learning model predicts the interactive and cumulative risks of different environmental chemical exposures on depression.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Development of a machine learning-based depression risk identification tool for older adults with asthma.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Depression represents a significant global public health challenge, and marital status has been recognized as a potential risk factor. However, previous investigations of this association have primarily focused on Western samples with substantial heterogeneity. Our study aimed to examine the association between marital status and depressive symptoms across countries with diverse cultural backgrounds using a large-scale, two-stage, cross-country analysis. We used nationally representative, de-identified individual-level data from seven countries, including the USA, the UK, Mexico, Ireland, Korea, China and Indonesia (106,556 cross-sectional and 20,865 longitudinal participants), representing approximately 541 million adults. The follow-up duration ranged from 4 to 18 years. Our analysis revealed that unmarried individuals had a higher risk of depressive symptoms than their married counterparts across all countries (pooled odds ratio, 1.86; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.61-2.14). However, the magnitude of this risk was influenced by country, sex and education level, with greater risk in Western versus Eastern countries (β = 0.36; 95% CI, 0.16-0.56; P < 0.001), among males versus females (β = 0.25; 95% CI, 0.003-0.47; P = 0.047) and among those with higher versus lower educational attainment (β
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Registered trials
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