13 August 2006

Regression By The Mean

Feel blue, say "I do" as weddings boost mood: study (Helen Chernikoff, Reuters, 8/13/06)
Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk -- down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you're depressed, according to a new U.S. study.

The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study.

On the other hand, if you're not depressed, marriage could have the opposite effect, Frech said.
Marriage is the great equalizer. Yet one more reason that it is the foundation of civilization and should not be lightly altered.

3 comments:

Oroborous said...

Except that it's already been altered. No proposed changes are going to fundamentally affect it further, they're all marginal things.

David said...

There will be a last straw. There's always a last straw. Doesn't it seem likely that this sort of ameliorative effect would be absent from, or even reversed by, polygamy?

Oroborous said...

There may well be a last straw, but such isn't yet on the table, which is why I wrote "no proposed changes", instead of "no possible changes".
The future will tell on that point.

I have been convinced, from conversing with you and others, that polygamy is a social corrosive, but even should it become the law of the land again, I'm not too worried about it, as long as no-fault divorce stays in place.
Not only will (IMO) few people actually enter into group marriages, but those marriages will be even less stable than are traditional marriages, (as I know from both theory and experience), so marriageable females will be constantly coming back onto the market - as indeed they are now from the break-ups of traditional marriages.