Birds of a feather: Couples are more likely to share psychiatric disorders

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-08-29 10:19

International

What does this mean?

Jump to: MultimediaAttachmentsExpert Reaction

People with psychiatric disorders have a higher probability of marrying someone who also has a psychiatric disorder, according to international research. The researchers say spouses are known to share biological traits at a rate higher than chance, generally due to a combination of preference, shared environment and society limiting who they're likely to date. To investigate how widespread this phenomenon is for psychiatric conditions, the researchers looked at the likelihood of shared psychiatric disorders among five million Taiwanese couples and nearly 1.3 million from Scandinavia. They say the link was there for the majority of the psychiatric conditions they examined and there was evidence this higher likelihood of shared conditions has existed across the world for at least 90 years.