Mariel Marcano-Olivier

Hello.

I would say for me, not necessarily surprising, but one of the things that I found really interesting was if you see the mental health diagnoses that were more likely to, shall we say, find each other, couple up, partner together, it's the symptoms of each mental health condition rather than the mental health condition matching sort of as a whole.

Yeah, absolutely.

So for example, you might find that someone who has a substance abuse disorder might find a relationship with someone who has ADHD

Now, this might be because both disorders, there is some interaction with impulsivity.

So people with substance use disorders struggle with willpower, impulsivity, things like that.

Sometimes people with ADHD struggle with those things as well, those executive functions.

And so we find that people with different mental health conditions, but who can understand each other on the basis of symptoms sort of fitting.

that kind of might bring them together.

So for example, you might be more likely to meet someone in a bar if you have a substance use disorder, and then you meet someone else who is in the bar who is very impulsive and exciting, and that's why they love going out to bars so much.

And so then those two people meet sort of as a result of or linked with their mental health condition, but not necessarily them going, hello, I have this mental health condition, do you?

I wouldn't say it's necessarily been overlooked.

This study was the largest study.

In fact, I personally haven't seen a study with six million, and that's six million couples, I think, six million pairs.

So even more people in this study.

And so this is the largest scale study that's ever happened.

So whilst it has been explored before, there are lots of things, smaller sample sizes, the participants that would come forward, perhaps biasing the data.

And so these sort of smaller studies might have had more variables.

So things outside of the study that are impacting the actual findings.

Whereas a study as big as this with 6 million spousal pairs, that is such a large amount of data that we can be very confident in this result.