September 09, 2025
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A large-scale study shows that couples tend to share mental health diagnoses like anxiety and depression. It may affect the design of future studies about genetics and psychiatric disorders, the researchers say.
A common refrain says opposites attract, but new research suggests otherwise, especially when it comes to mental health and addiction.
A large study published in Nature Human Behavior found couples are likely to share diagnoses for a wide range of behavioral health conditions, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, substance use disorder and autism. People were likely to marry others with the same psychiatric condition, the study showed.
These findings held true even among different cultures, time periods and changes in psychiatric care.
"We found that a majority of psychiatric disorders have consistent spousal correlations across nations and over generations," the researchers wrote.
Using national registries in Denmark, Sweden and Taiwan, the researchers examined data for more than five million couples between 1930 and 1990. Each decade saw an increase in the number of couples sharing a diagnosis, in particular for substance use disorder.
The researchers did not examine why people with behavioral health conditions might choose people who share them.
"Perhaps they better understand each other due to shared suffering, so they attract each other," the study's author and geneticist Chun Chieh Fan, said per Yahoo! News.
Another reason for couples sharing diagnoses could be that people who live together in the same environment may grow more similar over time, Fan said.
The findings have important implications for future studies, the researchers said.
"Given the ubiquitousness of spousal correlation, it is important to take non-random mating patterns into consideration when designing genetic studies of psychiatric disorders," the researchers wrote, per Vice.
In other words, scientists should take into account that couples tend to share psychiatric diagnoses, which may increase the risk of their children also having these conditions.
