A large-scale international study has revealed that spouses show significant and consistent similarities across 9 major psychiatric disorders, regardless of culture, healthcare system, or generation. The research was conducted by an international team led by Chun Chieh Fan of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Spouses Display Consistent Psychiatric Similarities Across Cultures and Generations
Background
The study examined health registries from Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden, covering nearly 15 million individuals and millions of spousal pairs. Using registry-based diagnoses and family linkages, the researchers evaluated correlations across 9 psychiatric disorders, testing whether spousal resemblance held across multiple cultural and generational contexts.
Psychiatric disorders studied included schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, substance use, and anxiety. Couples born from the 1930s to 1990s formed the sample, enabling researchers to trace patterns across ninety years.
Methodology relied on registry-based data to identify diagnoses and spousal links, supported by matched controls. Correlation analysis, generational cohort tracking, and parent-offspring risk estimation were applied. Results were compared with heritability and genetic correlation evidence from genome-wide association studies to ensure robustness.
Key Findings
Researchers reported several important findings that reveal how psychiatric resemblance among spouses appears across cultures, generations, and family structures. Their results highlight consistent patterns, notable variations, and significant implications for offspring risk and genetic research. The following lists and describes the primary findings:
• Similarity Across Disorders
Married couples consistently demonstrated positive correlations across all 9 identified psychiatric disorders. Specifically, if one partner was diagnosed, the other was significantly more likely to also have a diagnosis. This confirmed that psychiatric resemblance within couples is a widespread and stable pattern.
• Cross-Cultural Consistency
The resemblance patterns were nearly identical in Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden. Despite different cultural settings and healthcare systems, the results remained stable, indicating that psychiatric resemblance between spouses is a universal behavioral and genetic phenomenon rather than culture-specific.
• Generational Persistence
Spousal similarities were consistently observed across multiple cohorts from the 1930s to the 1990s. This stability across 90 years of social, cultural, and healthcare changes demonstrated that psychiatric resemblance among couples is not a temporary trend but a persistent phenomenon across generations.
• Disorder-Specific Variations
Some disorders displayed regional differences in spousal similarity. These included anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. The differences suggested that while the overall pattern is robust, cultural or diagnostic practices may influence specific conditions.
• Generational Trends in Taiwan
Analysis in Taiwan showed increasing similarity for substance abuse, decreasing similarity for obsessive compulsive disorder, and no stable trend for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These implied that social and cultural changes influenced psychiatric resemblance differently depending on the disorder.
• Notable Offspring Risk
Children of two parents with the same psychiatric disorder were at more than twice the risk of developing that same psychiatric disorder compared with children of one affected parent. The risk was particularly greater for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and substance use disorders.
• Parent-Offspring Resemblance
Generational changes in parent-offspring similarity mirrored spousal patterns in Taiwan. Similarity increased for depression and substance use but declined for obsessive-compulsive disorder. This reinforces assortative mating and emphasizes heightened psychiatric risks at the family level.
Implications
Spousal resemblance in psychiatric disorders carries significant consequences for public health, genetic research, and family risk assessment. Evidence indicates that children face more than double the risk when both parents are affected, with schizophrenia presenting the greatest concern. Clinicians must carefully consider family history in diagnosis and treatment.
Findings emphasize the need to incorporate assortative mating into genetic and epidemiological models. Overlooking spousal similarity may distort heritability estimates and psychiatric disorder prevalence. Accounting for these dynamics refines genetic research, strengthens predictive tools, and improves accuracy in population-level mental health studies.
Cross-cultural and generational persistence of these patterns shows that psychiatric resemblance among couples is a universal phenomenon extending beyond regions or eras. Both genetic and social mechanisms likely drive the effect, requiring policymakers and healthcare systems to design interventions supporting prevention, early treatment, and long-term care.
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
- Fan, C. C., Dehkordi, S. R., Border, R., Shao, L., Xu, B., Loughnan, R., Thompson, W. K., Hsu, L.-Y., Lin, M.-C., Cheng, C.-F., Lai, R.-Y., Su, M.-H., Kao, W.-Y., Werge, T., Wu, C.-S., Schork, A. J., Zaitlen, N., Buil Demur, A., and Wang, S.-H. 2025. “Spousal Correlations for Nine Psychiatric Disorders are Consistent Across Cultures and Persistent Over Generations.” Nature Human Behaviour. DOI: 1038/s41562-025-02298-z