A new paper from Lawrence Yang, Michael Phillips, and Xianyun Li entitled “Marriage outcome and relationship with urban versus rural context for individuals with psychosis in a population-based study in China.” was just published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
The Chinese Double Happiness characters, a traditional symbol of marriage in China.
Social integration for people with psychosis in low and middle income countries remains an important issue that might facilitate or hinder their recovery. However, this issue has rarely been investigated across urban versus rural settings in the same country. The researchers therefore examined marriage outcomes for individuals with psychosis in urban vs. rural settings in China in a large community-based study in four provinces representing 12% of China’s population (393 individuals with psychosis). Main results showed that while urban and rural residents had similar impairments due to symptoms, urban female residents were 2.72 times more likely to be unmarried than their rural counterparts. Further stratified analyses indicated that this marital disadvantage occurred primarily among urban females with an earlier age of onset.
The findings indicate that urban contexts impeded opportunities for marriage for female individuals with psychosis specifically. These data suggest that urban women with earlier age of onset have difficulty in obtaining marriage which may be related to economic expectations of women in urban areas. This research is especially significant regarding the rapid urbanization of China and how it might adversely effect social integration opportunities for people with psychosis.
