30 July 2009

Fucking Science

You've probably seen some items in the news about how divorced or widowed people are more likely to have chronic health and/or mental health issues. And that remarriage doesn't mitigate all the effects this. I had so far avoided reading about this because I get all salty when studies are done about divorced women and they (the results of the study) invariably make it sound like divorced, or never-married, women are sad, pathetic, ill, and depressed. I finally decided to read some of the articles. I got salty.

Here are some highlights from the WebMD article:

Compared to married people who had never been divorced or widowed, people who had lost a spouse to death or divorce but were not remarried at the time they were surveyed were 22% more likely to have chronic health conditions and 27% more likely to have mobility issues.

“People who did not remarry had significantly worse health than people who did, so remarriage helps,” Waite says. “But it does not erase the effects of being widowed or divorced.”

Well, isn't that a happy "fuck you" to us divorced women. As I couldn't find the actual article from the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, I don't have any information about how long people were married before the death or divorce happened, the age of the person during said event, or how long they were alone and sad before a remarriage. I can feel my sense of mental and physical well-being slowly eroding beneath the onslaught of social science.

Yes, I know that statistics are easily manipulated, and that extrapolating from a sample to a larger population can skew data. And that I'm not necessarily part of that 27% that will have mobility issues. I wasn't going to break out the walker, but if I don't get remarried soon, I may need to get me a Jazzy Chair. Yee-hah!

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