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Dating and Mental Illness - The Data
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Dating and Mental Illness - The Data Some folks have taken me to task on my assertion that it's more difficult to find a single woman without mental illness, in my demographic, than not. That I'm way overestimating the ration, because I only wind up dating crazies. That I've repeatedly explained how it's not the case doesn't seem to matter. The sole purpose of this post is to determine whether my claim is complete rubbish or within the realm of possibility. We're going to look at data, nothing more. I've covered the 'whys' and 'hows' elsewhere. Some scope for you - In every instance, the data refers to any mental illness as defined by the DSM. This guidebook is rather comprehensive, categorizing everything from psychosis to phobias to depression. This data doesn't distinguish between levels of illness or ability to function. There are different data sets for serious mental illness. Also, my claims have been centered on mental illness, not the ability to function. If you've read my posts, every woman I've encountered, with mental illness, has been very high functioning. They're well respected professionally and as mothers, don't boil rabbits, etc. To the rest of the world, they're perfectly normal (if there is such a thing), but to those who engage in a relationship with them, it's a completely different story. The causes I've seen have been wide ranging; something as seemingly basic as very low self-esteem will cause issues in a relationship. So, I've taken some time to research and find relevant data. Ideally, I wanted to find what the likelihood of mental illness was in separated or divorced college educated women between the ages of 40 to 50. It should come as no surprise that no data exists (at least in the public realm) that provides that level of granularity. However, plenty of data exists to allow us to sort of back into a number. Some attributes will require either a guess or just to dismiss it. For example, there's not sufficient granularity available to make a calculation on mental illness by age. All of the data sets I've found have too wide a range (26-49) for this exercise. However, when viewing a graph of what sets I have found, it's clear that the incidence of mental health illnesses peaks in the thirties and forties. Every study I've found indicates a rather sizable gap between the likelihood of mental illness in married people versus separated or divorced. It makes sense for that demographic to be the one with the highest incidence of mental illness as the logic becomes self-evident. A stable (even if not stellar) home life will prevent some mental illness from surfacing as well as mask existing issues. For example, a woman who's been married for two decades isn't likely to suffer from abandonment issues. Also, it would follow that mental illness may be the cause of some divorces, leaving the parties single. Certainly, this was the case with my ex-wife. Note the absence of opinion of whose mental illness was responsible. Let's dig into the data and start off with some sort of baseline. 26% of adult population suffer with a diagnosable or serious mental illness (NIH) Women are 50% more likely than men in general. (NIH) That extrapolates to 31% of women impacted. Throw in a 5% bump to ballpark an adjustment for women in their 40's and you ultimately reach a incidence of 33%. However, this doesn't take marital status into consideration. The only base data I could find, with respect to marital status was a source (Robins and Regier, 1991, p. 334) that says 44% divorced or separated have mental illness versus 24% for married people. In that case, if we adjust for gender, we reach a number of 66% of all separated/divorced women being impacted. I didn't adjust for age in this case. If we stick with the 31% baseline number, from the first scenario, and apply another data set I've found (Marital Status and Psychiatric Disorders, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, June 1992), the impact is even worse. According to this study, separated/divorced women are 2.59 times more likely than married women. Now, you're at 80% on the very low side. I don't necessarily buy into the magnitude of that particular data as the sample size isn't as large as I'd like it to be. Regardless of which data you use, it supports my assertion that in my target demographic, you are more likely to find yourself dating someone with mental illness than not. Also, I'll add for the record, that those numbers are in line with what I've observed from my own dating experience. One thing that certain readers should keep in mind is that one doesn't typically experience a strong reaction or rave about a mediocre meal. It's the amazingly good and extremely bad ones that people talk about. This post is not intended to be the definitive work on incidence of mental illness within a specified demographic. Some of the data I was forced to use had some age on it, but it was the best I could find to reach any level of granularity. Again, this is why I'm not claiming this to be accurate to within tenths of a percent. This post was to consider whether those who've claimed I seek out certain types of women and there's no way my claim that 70% (which was an unconsidered ballpark) of single women in their 40's having mental illness could be right. Based upon the data, it seems I'm in the ballpark. |
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Drops the mic and walks off the stage...
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Ok, well, go for 18-25 and 50 and over. Problem solved. 
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Interesting study citations. Presumably a handful of the women in the middle age single pool are there because their former mate was the one with issues. That does not undo the degree to which your comment has some weight, but it makes the message not so one sided. I'd not be surprised if many guys with issues avoid MH pros like they never go to doctors for anything either, and so some women can carefully qualify their words to say many of the good guys are taken. That some vs all qualifier makes a difference. Then there's the logic saying how can you be 100% normal, isn't everyone off on something, if you don't have a quirk you're not normal?
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Personally I think this world loves to put labels on everything and everyone. Dating is just hard, and it should be if you are looking for that one person to be with. But your post does open a discussion. Its only a dream away ..... Come and say hello
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By training, I'm a social scientist. First I applaud you for doing the digging for this information. IF one has a particular point of view, I always respect someone who turns to hard(ish) data to support their point instead of relying on emotion or inflammatory rhetoric. That being said, I do have a few questions. Let's dig into the data and start off with some sort of baseline. 26% of adult population suffer with a diagnosable or serious mental illness (NIH) Women are 50% more likely than men in general. (NIH) That extrapolates to 31% of women impacted. Can you clarify the math here? Are you saying that 31% of all women have a diagnosable or serious mental illness? I don't have a calculator on hand but aren't we looking at something closer to 15ish%? Also, they state very specifically (and intentionally) diagnosable or serious mental illness. That covers a great deal of ground ranging from the person who is depressed due to the loss of a job and might go on medication for a few months to the person who is disconnected from reality and living rough on the streets. Few people are seriously mentally ill, most have conditions that are treatable in the acute stages and that can either be resolved or managed. Throw in a 5% bump to ballpark an adjustment for women in their 40's and you ultimately reach a incidence of 33%. OK, from a sheer methods standpoint, I'm not sure how you are arriving at a 5% bump for women in their 40s. First, as a general note, different mental health issues manifest at different points in life. People who are schizophrenic or bipolar usually begin to manifest it in the late teens through mid 20s (although there are outliers). They also make up the lion's share of people in the "serious mental illness" because many of them cannot function well in society without oversite of some type. The only base data I could find, with respect to marital status was a source (Robins and Regier, 1991, p. 334) that says 44% divorced or separated have mental illness versus 24% for married people. Most literature does find that people who are married do seem to have better mental health as opposed to people who are single. However, if you were one of my students, I'd kick this citation back to you and tell you to bring me something more current. This cite is 25 years old and when I checked to see the age of the 4000+ articles that cite it, most are 10 years or older. If you are doing the kind of research you are doing, that's not sufficient. The way we approach mental health has changed *dramatically* in 25 years. It's even different then it was a decade ago. Date needs to be current as well as credible. Finally, I'm going to repeat a few things from the class discussion we had last week on biases. One of the most common ones is confirmation bias .That's when we place more weight on data that confirms the way we look at the world. One mistake some of my students make is that they will have a theory and then search for lit to support they theory as opposed to reading the lit and developing a theory based upon what they read. Big difference. Also, before you arrive at a conclusion, especially one so sweeping, you need to account for other possibilities for that same conclusion. So, let's talk about women and mental health why don't we? Women are more likely to seek help for mental health issues, they are more likely to seek counseling if someone else suggests it, they are more likely to be referred to a counselor by a physician or oby/gyn. Because any doctor can write a prescription, we can track the number of prescriptions for meds such as Xanax or Wellbutrin, what we can't know is how often these types of drugs might be prescribed because of an assumption or misdiagnosis. This means that a patient might go to the doctor, the doctor notes the patient has anxiety, gives them a prescription for Valium and that person never becomes a mental health stat. Men are underrepresented in mental health stats because so many of them do not seek help (there's a reason why when men commit suicide, they will paint the wall or do something equally catastrophic, as opposed to taking pills or something else that can be more easily reversed). So maybe it's not that the number of women is so high, maybe it's that women are grossly overrepresented and men grossly underrepresented (That's the reason you always look for newer data. Someone might have taken that old study and used it as a starting point to gather newer data that delves deeper into topic.) I'll repeat what I've said before. By the time a person is in their 40s, they will have been through a good bit of life. They will have lived through loss, success, failure, disappointment, periods of adjustment. Like a 10 year old car, the psyche will have some dents and dings. We will have our quirks, might be slower to trust or more reckless with our hearts or whatever. We all have our own personal touch of crazy. However, you've talked about women who were walking train wrecks *and* that you have had multiple women partners who physically assaulted you to the point that you were concerned. That is not normal. For some reason, you tend to partner with women who manifest this kind of behavior. It's not a "most women" thing, this is a *you* thing. *You* are the common denominator, not the women because they seem to cycle through. Have you ever sat down and wrote out the qualities of some of these women and looked for commonalities? That might give you a clue as to what is going on.
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