Divorce is a hard situation to go through. Between dealing with all the emotions and financial burdens that go along with it, it can really leave a person vulnerable. How vulternable? Enough, says a study in the Journal of Men's Health, that it allows more men to suffer from more heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes, more cancer and even colds.
Yikes.
Divorced men are also more likely to die earlier, have higher rates of alcohol and substance abuse and a 39% higher suicide rate than married men. Men who divorce also have less sex, and they are less satisfied with what they do have.
This report coorelates with a Finnish study that showed the as little as five years before ending their marriages, divorced couples reported 1 percent higher usage of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs than those who stayed married. However, this figure rose to 7 percent for men and 8 percent for women in the six to nine months before the divorce. Afterwards, use fell but still remained 3 percent higher than among married couples.
Which is also to say that while men get the worst of the situation, women also are susceptible to the ills that befall the recently divorced. Another study conducted by professors at Bowling Green and Univ. of Texas reported that a large number of post-divorce women are also prone to heart disease. However, they tie that fact to a large number of women being financially worst off than men in that period.
The study also argued that women take longer to recover from conflict in their marriages and continue to have higher levels of stress hormones for longer afterwards.
For more: Will getting divorced make me ill? (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/06/getting-divorced-make-me-ill