‘Til dementia do us part: Study finds greater cognitive decline among married

• A new study suggests that married and widowed individuals bear a significantly higher risk of developing dementia than their unmarried and divorced counterparts. The findings contradict long-held beliefs that marriage produces better health outcomes.
• More than 24,000 people between the ages of 50 and 104 participated in the study, which lasted upwards of 18 years depending on the participant.
• While the study failed to yield definitive reasons why single people have a lower risk of developing dementia, potential reasons include a more robust social life, greater self-reliance, or psychologically richer lives.

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Prevailing wisdom has long held that married people enjoy better health outcomes throughout life. However, a new study published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia suggests that married individuals are significantly more likely to develop dementia than their unmarried and divorced counterparts.

Researchers from the Florida State University College of Medicine and the University of Montpellier tracked more than 24,000 participants between the ages of 50 and 104 for up to 18 years. Each participant –– who identified as married, widowed, divorced or never married –– began the study without dementia, though some had mild cognitive impairment.

The participants enrolled in the study from 42 different Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers nationwide and yielded a combined 122,000 “person-years of data,” according to Medical Xpress. They received annual neuropsychological evaluations and clinical exams.

Digging into the data

Key to the team’s findings was that  21.9% of both married and widowed participants developed dementia, Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia over the course of the study, while only 12.8% and 12.4% of divorced and never-married participants did, respectively. The researchers also noted that their findings largely held regardless of a person’s age, sex, race, education level, lifestyle choices and other variables tied to physical and mental health.

Of the participants who became widowed during the study’s period, the researchers found that they were less likely to develop dementia than those who were married throughout.

Likewise, while some participants began the study with mild cognitive impairment, the unmarried group was again less likely to progress into clinical dementia over the course of their participation in the study.

Additionally, unmarried men showed the least risk of developing dementia.

The not-so-secret life of single people

While the study failed to yield definitive answers as to why unmarried and divorced people are less susceptible to dementia, its authors posit several theories, including that single people maintain more robust social ties with their friends and community, and that they are required to be more self-reliant.

“Never married individuals are also more likely to socialize with friends and neighbors and are more likely to engage in healthier behaviors than their married counterparts,” the study’s authors write. “Married individuals tend to have less social integration and are engaged in less frequent and lower-quality interactions in their networks compared to their unmarried counterparts. These positive aspects of well-being and social ties may potentially serve as protective factors against dementia over time.”  

Similarly, writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Bella DePaulo, an expert on single people and author of “Single at Heart” notes that unmarried individuals “may have more psychologically rich lives characterized by a variety of interesting and unique experiences.”

DePaulo adds, “Leading that kind of life may well keep people cognitively sharp.”