Marital Processes around Depression: A Gendered and Relational Perspective
Open accessAbstract
Despite extensive evidence of the importance of marriage and marital processes for mental health, little is known about the interpersonal processes around depression within marriage and the extent to which these processes are gendered. We use a mixed-methods approach to explore the importance of gender in shaping processes around depression within marriage. We approach this in two ways: First, using quantitative longitudinal analysis of 2,601 couples from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we address whether depressive symptoms in one spouse shape the other spouse’s depressive symptoms and whether men or women are more influential in this process. We find that a wife’s depressive symptoms influence her husband’s future depressive symptoms, but a husband’s depressive symptoms do not influence his wife’s future symptoms. Second, we conduct a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 29 couples wherein one or both spouses experienced depression to provide additional insight into how gender impacts depression and reactions to depression within marriage. Our study points to the importance of cultural scripts of masculinity and femininity in shaping depression and emotional processes within marriage and highlights the importance of applying a gendered couple-level approach to better understand the mental health effects of marital processes.
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A growing body of evidence indicates that partners' emotional states mutually influence one another.
“A growing body of evidence indicates that partners’ emotional states mutually influence one another [56,61–64].”
From Fathers at risk: Effects of threatened and actual preterm birth on the course of paternal peripartum depression and anxiety (2026) · cites this paper as [63]
The Discussion says depressive symptoms can spread between spouses over time, supporting influence between partners. But the Results—HRS Data > Autoregressive Models find that wives’ symptoms consistently predict husbands’ later symptoms, while husbands’ symptoms generally do not predict wives’ later symptoms. The paper therefore does not support mutual influence as a consistently bidirectional finding. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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References 85 · Cited by 85
Research works printed but not linked: 19
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- Authors
- Thomeer, M. B., Umberson, D., & Pudrovska, T.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Venue
- Society and Mental Health
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-05-20
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 151-169
- ISSN
- 2156-8693 (ISSN-L)
- 2156-8731
- PMC
- PMC4408555
- OpenAlex
- W2119879342
- Cited by
- 85
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 5.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Society and Mental Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG026613)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HD042849)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Keywords
- depression, gender differences, spousal influence, couples, masculinity, femininity, cultural scripts, mental health
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