Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk -- down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health,especially if you're depressed, according to a new US study.

    感觉孤独？情绪低落？那就步入婚姻的殿堂吧！美国最新的一项研究发现，结婚能够改善心理健康状况，对那些抑郁症患者尤其有效。

    The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study.

    婚姻对抑郁症患者的益处十分明显，这个发现令研究小组里的教授和学生都感到惊讶。

    "We actually found the opposite of what we expected," said Adrianne Frech, a PhD sociology student at Ohio State University who conducted the study with Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology.

    俄亥俄州立大学社会学博士阿德里亚诺·弗雷希和社会学助理教授克里斯季·威廉斯主持了该项研究。弗雷希说：“事实上我们发现的结果和预期完全相反。”

    They expected to find that one spouse's depression weighed too much on the marriage, but "just mattering to someone else can help alleviate symptoms of depression".

    研究人员原本期望证明配偶的抑郁症会对婚姻产生很大的负面影响，不料却发现“结婚能够减轻抑郁症”。

    Frech will present their findings at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Montreal on Sunday.

    弗雷希将会在加拿大蒙特利尔召开的美洲社会学协会年会上交流他们的研究成果。

    The researchers used a 3,066 person sample that measured symptoms of depression -- such as an inability to sleep, or persistent sadness -- in the same people both before and after their first marriage.

    科研人员以3066名抑郁症患者作为研究样本，他们都有诸如失眠、长期悲伤等抑郁症状。研究人员比较了他们第一次婚姻前后的心理状况。

    They found that depressed people experienced a much more extreme decrease in the incidence of those symptoms.

    科研人员发现抑郁症患者结婚后抑郁症状大大缓解。威廉斯说，“也许忧郁的人更加需要婚姻所提供的亲密关系、亲近的感情以及社会支持。如果你原本就很快乐，那么婚姻对你的影响不会像抑郁症患者那么明显。”

    "Depressed people may be just especially in need of the intimacy, the emotional closeness and the social support that marriage can provide ... if you start out happy, you don't have as far to go," Williams said.

    On the other hand, if you're not depressed, marriage could have the opposite effect, Frech said.

    People who were happy before getting married and end up in a marriage plagued by distance or conflict -- qualities associated with a depressed spouse -- might be better off single.

    不过弗雷希说，对没有抑郁症的人来说，婚姻可能会导致相反的结果。如果一个人婚前很幸福，却误入不幸的婚姻之中，夫妻间隔膜很深，争吵不断，那么最好独身。而如果夫妻双方有一人是抑郁症患者，这种情况常常出现。

    "It seems right to say that people who are not depressed are at risk, that if they marry a depressed person this could be a bad deal for them," Frech said.

    弗雷希说，“似乎可以这样说，那些没有抑郁症的人处于危险之中。如果他们和一位抑郁症患者结婚，那么对他们来说这样的婚姻就比较糟糕。”