A Johns Hopkins study finds that physicians in some specialties -- chiefly psychiatry and surgery -- are at higher risk for divorce than their medical brethren in other fields. But the results do not support the common view that job-related anxiety and depression are linked to marital breakup. Alerting medical students to the risks of divorce in some specialties may influence their career choices and strengthen their marriages whatever field they choose, says Michael J. Klag, M.D., senior author and an associate professor of medicine. "Marital counseling during residency training appears to be a good idea for family and career satisfaction in the long term," Klag says. The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, is published in the March 13 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Results also strongly suggest that the high divorce risk in some specialties may result from the inherent demands of the job as well as the emotional experiences of physicians who enter those fields. . The Hopkins team assessed the specialty choices, marriage histories, psychological characteristics, and other career and personal factors of 1,118 physicians who graduated from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1948 through 1964. Over 30 years of follow-up, the divorce rate was 51 percent for psychiatrists, 33 percent for surgeons, 24 percent for internists, 22 percent for pediatricians and pathologists, and 31 percent for other specialties. The overall divorce rate was 29 percent after three decades of follow-up and 32 percent after nearly four decades of follow-up. Physicians who married before medical school graduation had a higher divorce rate than those who waited until after graduation (33 percent versus 23 percent). The year of first marriage was linked with divorce rates: 11 percent for marriages before 1953, 17 percent for those from 1953 to 1957, 24 percent for those from 1958 to 1962 and 21 percent for those after 1962. Those who had a parent die before medical school graduation had a lower divorce rate. Female physicians had a higher divorce rate (37 percent) than their male colleagues (28 percent). Physicians who were members of an academic honor society in medical school had a lower divorce rate, although there was no difference in divorce rates according to class rank. Religious affiliation, being an only child, having a parent who was a physician and having a divorced parent were not associated with divorce rates. Physicians who reported themselves to be less emotionally close to their parents and who expressed more anger under stress also had a significantly higher divorce rate, but anxiety and depression levels were not associated with divorce rate. "Healthy marriages have deep affection, compatibility, expressiveness and conflict resolution, so the higher risk of divorce in those less emotionally close to their parents could be telling," says Klag. "Feeling distant from your parents may indicate a decreased ability to form an intimate relationship with your spouse. Also, marriage after medical school may allow the relationship to develop in a less stressful environment." Researchers cautioned that the study, which looked at marital histories through 1987, did not address quality of marriage and that physicians may be more likely to stay in poor marriages for financial and social reasons. Also, most physicians in the study were white males first married in the 1940s and 1950s when divorce was less socially acceptable, so the risks may vary for contemporary physicians, who include more women and minorities, say researchers. Future studies should examine the quality of marriage, physicians' and spouses' views of their relationship, society's changing expectations of marriage, more women and minority physicians, and the effect of medical school debt and other stresses on divorce risks, the researchers say. Co-authors of the study, which was part of the Johns Hopkins Precursors Study, an ongoing, prospective study of physicians from the Hopkins medical school graduating classes of 1948 through 1964, were lead author Bruce L. Rollman, M.D., Lucy A. Mead, Sc.M., and Nae-Yuh Wang, M.S. --JHMI-- Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions news releases can be accessed on-line through the following services: World Wide Web at http://infonet.welch.jhu.edu/news/news_releases CompuServe in the SciNews-MedNews library of the Journalism Forum under file extension ".JHM". JHMI toll-free Health NewsFeed BBS at 1-800-JHH-0046. Quadnet: send email to: [email protected]. In the body of the message type "info Quadnet." To enroll in our direct e-mail news release service, call 410-955-4288. Source
It should come as no surprise to anyone that studies have shown that doctors have more divorce rate than the general population. It's usually attributed (and I'm paraphrasing here), "She/He's too busy for me." We've all heard that. Mostly from parents. But as wedding invitations for my non-medical friends keep clogging up my inbox, I've come up with another, albeit somewhat similar, theory for our collective inability to maintain healthy relationships: long hours really do ruin our lives. chances of finding the right partner in the first place. It's almost as if our relationships are destined to fail. Here are a few observations: First of all, I have several close friends from medical school who are married or about to get married. I know their relationships fairly well, and I think they are the kind of couples who are willing to go the distance. I also have other friends from medical school who don't seem to be able to maintain a relationship for any significant period of time. Totally bimodal distribution. So, what do the successful couples have in common? They all met before medical school ... when they had free time to meet literally thousands of new people and choose the one who best suited them. They took advantage of their time on planet Earth, filled with sunshine and an endless rotation of people they could interact with. Ah, it makes me feel nostalgic just talking about it. On the other hand, anyone left alone in medical school seems to end up going to another doctor. It has long been thought that medical professionals date each other because of a mutual "understanding" of the high demands in terms of emotion and time. I think there is a much simpler explanation - we are the only human contact we get. We are stuck in the hospital in our "get out and meet people" heyday. Yet, our pool of choice never changes (or only changes every July, you know who you are). Statistically, we lose. If I could remember what the plausibility ratio was, I'd think ours was terrible. Please don't misinterpret this as if doctors are not subject to dating. We just don't have the same choices as the rest of the population. No hot orthopedists can handle it. That's why I brought it up - I've been rethinking myself a bit and realized that my relationship with two medical schools had one thing in common: they were easy (slow down the turbo, not so easy). One was with a classmate, and the other, determined to find someone outside of medicine, was my closest neighbor. This struck me as a total Foley bag: doctors date because of convenience, not compatibility. Any relationship with such a shaky foundation is simply not viable.
