Marital status in psychiatric patients.

During the last decades much research has indicated that marital status has an impact both on referrals to the mental health service and on the outcome of treatment. The main trends found in earlier research on the differences between single, married and separated/divorced patients, are confirmed in the present study. This is based both on a census and on a group of referred patients from a catchment area in Oslo in 1979. The problems connected with detecting the differential and independent impact of marital status in relation to other socio-demographic variables are pointed out.