How Can Divorce Impact Mental Health? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.
Over the past few weeks in the United Kingdom, the advert for the new TV programme "Youth" on HBO Max has been playing and it gets me thinking every time I see it. The story follows a divorced single mother trying to relive her youth when her son goes off to university. To me, that life transition is fascinating. Her sense of self, her self-esteem and her motivations might all change overnight because of her son going off to university. That transition is a psychological goldmine. However, to start off looking into this topic, I really do want us to investigate divorce and how it impacts our mental health. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you'll understand how divorce impacts our mental health, how to cope with divorce and so much more. If you enjoy learning about mental health, life transitions and social psychology, then this will be a great episode for you.
Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Social Psychology Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
How Does Divorce Impact Mental Health?
Like I said in the introduction, over the past few weeks in the United Kingdom, the advert for the new TV programme "Youth" on HBO Max has been playing and it gets me thinking every time I see it. The story follows a divorced single mother trying to relive her youth when her son goes off to university. To me, that life transition is fascinating. Her sense of self, her self-esteem and her motivations might all change overnight because of her son going off to university. That transition is a psychological goldmine. However, to start off looking into this topic, I really do want us to investigate divorce and how it impacts our mental health.
As a result, divorce is one of the most psychologically disruptive life events that a person can experience, as well as serious illness and bereavement. This is understandable because at one point, you dreamt or thought that you would love, treasure and build a life with this other person forever. Yet now that dream or vision is shattered and you have to imagine life without them.
In addition, the stats suggest that around 50% of marriages will end in divorce and this means that divorce is common and it impacts a lot of people. Nonetheless, there is still a lot of taboo around divorce. For example, my larger family is somewhat religious and whilst we are not Catholics, sometimes I do get the impression that my larger family believes that marriage is forever in the eyes of God and divorce is heresy and awful.
If we zoom out then some people believe that divorce is a sign of failure on the part of the couple, and there are silly societal myths that add to this shame. For instance, one of the most harmful that I’ve encountered is the pointless belief that married couples that hate each other should stay together for the sake of the children. This rarely works out because of the conflict between the parents and how this negatively impacts the children’s mental health, their attachment styles and their own view of relationships. Yet this is beyond the scope of this particular episode.
Anyway, divorce can impact a person’s mental health because they’re surprised by the intensity of what they are feeling and/ or they feel ashamed that they aren’t able to simply “get over it”.
This is one of the reasons why understanding the mental health impact of divorce is so important because it helps us to validate our clients and understand what is normal, what isn’t and how we can best support people going through divorce to protect their mental health.
Furthermore, from the perspective of an aspiring clinical psychologist, this is very interesting because at the time of writing, I’m 25 years old, I’m single and gay and I do not intend to get married for years. Therefore, this will be a barrier in my clinical work if I ever had to support a client with their mental health caused by their divorce. Yet this doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be an effective mental health professional, it just means that I need to understand this gap in my knowledge, learn more about the topic and be able to apply it in the real world.
That’s why this episode is useful to everyone. It makes us more aware so we can help more people.
Finally for this introduction section, this is also interesting for aspiring and qualified educational psychologists because if a teacher, a support staff member or parents are going through a divorce then this could have an impact on the child’s mental health and their educational outcomes. For example, if two parents are getting a divorce and they’re arguing so much that the child is fearful at home, then their behaviour might be disruptive or change in the afternoon approaching home time. This would have an impact on the education environment and other children.
On the other hand, if a teacher is getting divorced and it’s going well, then they might be happier, have more energy and they might be more attentive to their students because they’re suddenly free of this mental drain of being in an unhappy marriage. Again, this will have an impact on the educational environment.
Why Is Divorce Complex?
One of the main reasons why a divorce has an impact on our mental health is because it is very complex for us on a psychological level, and it isn’t an easy or quick process. For example, divorce involves identity disruption, conflict, legal stuff, logistics changes and so on. Typically, this all happens at the same time. For instance, to use an educational psychology example, a teacher with a young child and a young teenager who’s getting a divorce from his wife, might need to balance finding a new house, finding new schools, legal proceedings, meetings with lawyers, marking, lesson planning, continued professional development, custody battles and so on.
All on their own.
It is these concurrent stressors that partially explain why divorce is so complex for us on a psychological level.
Another reason is because, by its very nature, divorce can be complex because it requires us to undergo a process of social reconfiguration. We need to reexamine our friendships as some friends might be concerned about picking sides and a divorcee might figure out that their “friends” were actually more their ex-partner’s friends and so on. Also, the relationship that we have with our extended family changes as well as a couple might have favourite activities that they flat out loved to do individually and as a couple, but now with their divorce they need to readjust them. For instance, a couple might love sailing and they might want to do it independently after their divorce but the activity might stir up emotions, memories and they might need to readjust their relationship with the activity.
Moreover, divorce disrupts your identity. All of our social relationships can be deeply intertwined with who we are. Whenever we get into a deeply committed relationship, we become life partners with the other person, we make decisions to become, we plan to spend the rest of our lives together and so on. A divorce changes this completely and we now have to figure out who we are without this person.
This is one of the reasons why I was so interested in the premise of “Youth” because it focuses on how this 40-year-old woman reconstructs her identity after her divorce and now that her son goes off to university.
Finally, divorce is complex because the sense of loss is strong but it’s also very ambiguous. After the death of a loved one or friend, the loss is not ambiguous because that person is sadly gone. You will never ever see them again. Yet in divorce, the other person is still around, alive and you might still see them outside of legal proceedings. You might see them when you exchange communications, take the children to see them, at work or in similar social circles. This makes divorce complex because the lack of closure makes it harder to grieve as well as move on.
How Does Divorce Impact the Grief Process?
Interestingly, one aspect of divorce that is rarely spoken about and it doesn’t get the mainstream attention that it deserves is the grief process. Since even if the divorce is respectful and you both understand that this is needed, there will still be a grieving process. At one point, you both must have imagined that you would spend the rest of your lives together and now that dream is shattered. Or you and your partner have spent months or years working and building this great life together and now all that work is undone.
Whatever your personal situation, it is normal, understandable and okay for there to be a grieving process.
As a result, whilst Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief appears in every single popular divorce book, it isn’t really how grief works in divorce. Since research in grief, both in terms of relationship loss and bereavement, demonstrate that people’s paths through loss are not linear and they’re a lot more varied than a simple stage model could possibly understand.
Moreover, it’s important to understand that divorce isn’t only about the loss of a relationship, it also involves feelings of reduced anxiety, genuine relief and improved wellbeing over time. This is even more true for people who have been in chronically unhappy, abusive or incompatible relationships.
The research shows that recovery is very much possible after the grief associated with divorce because most people return to baseline psychological functioning within 2 to 3 years. Also, most people experience a period of acute distress that is the most intense within the first 6 to 18 months, as well as meaning making is very important to recovery. This is when you find ways to understand your divorce that allow for a coherent sense of self. Lastly, around a quarter of people experience prolonged or complicated grief responses and it is these people in particular that might benefit from mental health support.
How Does Divorce Impact Mental Health?
Thankfully as a psychology podcaster, I always enjoy it when the research is very extensive and consistent. Therefore, research consistently shows that separated and divorced individuals experience depression and anxiety at much higher rates than married people. This isn't even mostly down to the selection effects, such as unhappy people getting divorced. Instead, longitudinal studies show that mental health tends to worsen after divorce for most people and thankfully it can slowly recover over 2 to 3 years (Sbarra et al., 2011).
As an aspiring mental health professional, I firmly believe that the paragraph above is very important, because we might be subtly supporting a client to see for themselves that divorce or leaving their partner (even more so in the case of domestic abuse) is the best choice, then the client does it and their mental health decreases. Our uninformed minds or opinions might be confused or tempted to blame the client for feeling worse off now that a "bad" relationship is out of their life, but this research helps to show that this is normal, understandable and it is a part of divorce.
As a result, it's important that we continue to focus on supporting clients, helping them find techniques and strategies to manage their mental health during their life transition and to help them find who they are in light of this loss.
In addition, the negative mental and physical health effects are typically the most severe during the first year of separation.
Building upon this, divorce can impact our physical health too, because of the body-mind link so our mental health can impact our physical health too and vice versa. For instance, sleep disorders, increased rates of immune dysfunction and cardiovascular disease are common amongst divorced people, as well as that stress of a divorce can activate sustained physiological stress responses that over time damage our physical health.
I think one of the scariest physical health impacts of divorce is that divorced individuals tend to have shorter lifespans than their married counterparts. Nonetheless, it's important to realise that this isn't a reason or excuse for a person to stay in an unhappy marriage, because what a legal document says about you isn't going to extend or shorten your life.
Instead, this pattern of shorter lifespans is driven by the divorced person's health behaviours that increase during periods of acute stress. Such as, reduced exercise, poor diet as well as alcohol and drug use.
Personally, this last fact is a powerful reminder that we do actively need to be supporting people going through a divorce. They shouldn't be left to their own devices because they need a supportive, empathetic and compassionate network of friends and family around them during this difficult time. This should help them to escape the worst of the negative impacts.
For me, this fact gets me reflecting on what if one of my friends and family members decided to get a divorce. As I'm human at the end of the day, I think my first reaction would be to find out the details and the more "gossip" side of this revelation. Yet in reality, I think what's actually needed is for me to actively listen, be reflective and empathetic towards the friend or family member who shared it and I focus on how to support them.
That might be the better option.
Thankfully, there are factors that can lead people to have better outcomes for their mental and physical health during a divorce. Since whilst factors like economic insecurity, social isolation, high-conflict dissolution, having younger children and being the non-initiating partner can predict worse outcomes after divorce. There are factors that can better predict outcomes.
For instance, if the divorcing couple has a low-conflict separation process, they have a personal identity as well as purpose outside of the marriage, they're economically stable, have strong social support networks and they initiated the divorce, these are all examples of factors that can improve outcomes.
Personally, I suppose what aspiring and qualified mental health professionals can learn from this is that if we are supporting a client towards feeling empowered enough that they can initiate a divorce, then we need to ensure that they understand that we will still be there to support them throughout and after the process. Whereas even if we’re supporting a client who is not the initiator of the divorce, we need to ensure that we create space within the therapy context to support the client through this very stressful and difficult time.
How Does Divorce Impact Children?
I’m aware that for a lot of parents, this is one of their main concerns. They might want to get divorced but they’re scared or anxious about how it will impact their children, they might believe that staying together is right for their children but that decision might harm their children over time and so on.
In this section, we need to focus on what the research actually says about children and how divorce impacts them. Therefore, the quality of the co-parenting is extremely important because children do the best when both parents remain involved and cooperative. This includes the parents communicating directly with each other instead of through the child and both parents maintain consistency across households.
I understand that this can be very difficult for parents because they might hate the idea of communicating directly with each other, one parent might want to be completely lax and the other parent might want to be stricter and so on. Yet if it is safe for the partners to maintain communication with each other, then it is best if they do this.
For aspiring and qualified mental health professionals, my mind goes to teaching and enabling clients to develop three things. Firstly, clients will need to be able to improve and strengthen their communication skills, so they can communicate effectively and in ways that minimise misunderstandings and conflicts. Secondly, we would need to empower our clients to put boundaries in place. For example, you only allow your ex-partner to contact you when it’s explicitly about your child and all other contact is prohibited. Thirdly, it’s important to give our clients effective problem-solving skills because there will be struggles, problems and difficulties with this co-parenting. Especially in the beginning. Yet if we want our client to thrive and protect their own mental health then we need to give them the confidence to defend their boundaries, solve problems when they come up and empower our client to live authentically within their values and principles.
Furthermore, whilst short-term effects are common, most children adjust well over time to their parents getting divorced. This means that it is normal for most children to experience an increase in behavioural problems at the beginning of the divorce. For example, emotional distress and academic difficulties. This can last between one and two years after their parents separate, and this is a normal response to the significant life disruption.
Nonetheless, most children adjust well over time as supported by longitudinal studies.
Personally, I’ve had friends, co-workers and I’ve known other people over the years who have had divorced parents and they’re fine.
Lastly, what really determines if a divorce harms or doesn’t harm a child is parental conflict. If the child is exposed to high levels of sustained parental conflict, they will suffer worse than children who go through a low-conflict divorce. This means that it is always best to protect children from parental hostility, do not use them as messengers and do not catch children in the middle of the divorce.
For me, I strongly believe that this links back to what I was talking about earlier, if we can teach our clients how to self-advocate, feel empowered, defend their boundaries and solve problems, then this can reduce their perceived need to use their child as a messenger and expose them to the parental conflict.
How Do You Cope with Divorce?
Now that we understand how divorce can take a toll on your mental health, we need to understand what you can do to protect your mental health and better cope during a divorce. Also, as a reminder, this is important for all of us to be aware of because it's likely that one day, ourselves, our friends or peers might go through a divorce and when that happens, we should be there to support them.
Giving them ideas and ways to cope might be a good idea.
Cope with a Divorce By Actively Investing in Relationships
One of the most important things that you can do during a divorce is to reach out to your friends as well as family members, and when you do this, it's useful to be honest about your struggles and accept their offers of help. It might be tempting to reject their offers because you think that you need to be strong, independent and prove that you don't need your former spouse, but if you do reject offers of help, then you're risking social isolation. This is especially important as research shows that divorced people that have higher levels of perceived social support do better.
This idea of perceived support is important because you might not have a lot of real support being offered to you, but if you feel connected and like your friends and family are offering you a lot of support, that is what makes all the difference in coping and protecting your mental health during and after a divorce.
Cope with Divorce by Developing and Leaning on Social Support
Building upon the last point, social support is one of the strongest predictors of mental health recovery after divorce. This shouldn't be anything new to any of us, but when it comes to divorce this can be easier said than done. Especially, as divorce can be tied up with shame, guilt and social isolation.
This can be true even if the relationship wasn't abusive and coercive control wasn't used. Sometimes you might not want to share about the divorce because your parents or a friend or loved one was always convinced that your ex-partner wasn't good enough for you and you don't want them to do the whole "I told you so" speech. As well as you might have to deal with friends or family members being awkward or unsure how to talk about the divorce because of the psychologically complex nature of this event.
However, like we said in the previous section, it's important that you do invest in your relationships, reach out for support and accept it when it comes.
In addition, if you feel like your friends and family members aren't able to support or understand you as much as you would like (and even if they do understand you), it might be useful to join a support group for people going through divorce. This gives you a psychologically safe place for you to connect with other people going through divorce so you can bond and relate to each other.
Cope with Divorce by focusing on your physical health
Similar to what I mentioned earlier, our mental health does have a direct relationship on our mental health and vice versa. Since our sleep, just one example, can be caused by and it can cause mental health difficulties in its own right. Therefore, if you don't eat nutritious food, exercise or sleep properly then this can negatively impact your mental health. As well as this will make it more difficult to cope with the challenges and stressors associated with divorce.
Then your negative mental health will make it more difficult to manage your physical health and so on. It can become an awfully vicious cycle.
Thankfully, looking after physical health can be a very effective way to manage your mental health during the stressors of divorce. Since exercise can provide you with social contact, structure as well as a sense of agency during a period of your life when you might feel out of control and like your life is at the whims of everyone else and the courts.
Cope With Divorce by Seeking Meaning and Developing Your Identity
As I've spoken about several times during this podcast episode, life after divorce involves finding out who you are now that you only no longer have a partner and that the person who you thought you'd be spending the rest of your life with isn't that person anymore. As well as I talk about the importance of your sense of self and how to build a stronger and more resilient self in my book, Your Unshakable Self.
Anyway, if we go back to thinking about divorce then we need to realise that some of the work that you or your friend or family member will be doing is constructing a coherent narrative about what happened, who you are now and what you want for the future.
Research shows that after a significant loss, like a divorce, it's best if you allow space for the complex feelings that you'll have and this allows you to grow and develop a coherent sense of self and personal identity over time. This should improve your mental health outcomes in the long term.
As part of allowing for space, it can be worth spending some time considering what the relationship taught you, what do you want to do differently next time and what parts of your identity were lost in this relationship and what do you want to reclaim.
These sort of questions can help you to grow and develop a new identity for life after divorce.
Personally, I always find these questions really useful. For example, even though I've only ever been in two relationships, I enjoy reflecting on them. Both relationships taught me so much and I'm happy that I got to date those two amazing people. They were beautiful, lovely and really smart. Yet each relationship did teach me something important for the future. For example, I won't date a closeted person again and I would prefer not to date someone with avoidant attachment.
After your divorce, you can do the same. Reflect on what went well and what you would like to do differently in the future.
Cope With Divorce by Managing Legal Stress Deliberately
As we all probably know from conversations, TV programmes and movies and more, divorce can involve a massive legal headache. Especially, for high-conflict divorces. Therefore, it isn't really that surprising that high-conflict legal proceedings are some of the strongest predictors of poor mental health for children as well as partners. This is one of the reasons why it's important to reduce conflict during the legal process. You might be able to do this by using co-parenting coordinators, doing a collaborative divorce and mediation. Research shows that these methods tend to lead to better mental health outcomes for everyone involved in the divorce.
Nonetheless, I did mention that children are negatively impacted by high-conflict legal proceedings and divorces. Therefore, it can be immensely helpful if you minimise your child's exposure to parental conflict and it's important that this is maintained throughout their life. Since it still isn't good for the child's mental health as an adult when they feel caught between their parents. For instance, when an adult child is planning a family event, like a birthday or Christmas celebration, it works best for the child's mental health if neither parent is asked to carry the other's grievances.
Again, from a clinical psychology viewpoint, I'm interested in this fact because whilst this is very much down to the client to manage their legal proceedings, we can still help them find adaptive ways to cope with this stress, the uncomfortable feelings and the worry associated with the divorce. As well as how to find healthy communication methods, especially if their child asks "what's going to happen to me? Will I be allowed to see you again?".
In addition, for aspiring or qualified educational psychologists, you might be working in a school with a child or student and you might be doing some clinical work, then the child reveals their parents' divorce, the sheer amount of conflict that they're exposed to and the child is terrified that they won't be able to live with their parents. The child might have innocently misunderstood something or child services might be involved in the divorce or one of their parents is threatening to make sure they can never ever see the other parent ever again. This stress and anxiety about their home life might lead the child to struggle to concentrate at school or they might disengage with their education. Whether there is a legitimate reason or not for the threat is beyond the scope of this podcast episode. What is important is that educational psychologists need to be aware that they might have to coordinate and work with parents to minimise the negative impact of their divorce on their child and their education.
Cope with Divorce by Getting Professional Help
Long-term readers and listeners will be well aware that I always save this important and critical option for last because it is extremely important and I really want us all to focus on the usefulness of seeing a mental health professional if needed. In a divorce, it can be useful to see a mental health professional, especially if the emotional distress of the divorce is impacting on your daily functioning, there's a history of trauma that the divorce is activating as well as if the high conflict that you're experiencing with your former partner is a consistent problem.
Some other signs that therapy or mental health support might be useful during and after a divorce is if you're experiencing persistent suicidal thoughts, you have an inability to function as a parent, in basic self-care or at work, as well as you use an addictive substance or alcohol as a way to cope with divorce. Also, you might want to consider therapy if your children are showing worsening or severe distress, like self-harm, significant behavioural difficulties or emotion-based school non-attendance.
On the whole, there are divorce-focused types of therapy, for example cognitive behavioural therapy as well as emotion-focused therapy, can be very effective for divorce. There's a strong evidence base for their effectiveness in reducing anxious and depressive symptoms and it can help you to adjust during this immensely stressful period.
Clinical Psychology Conclusion
Even though it’s been close to a year since I’ve been in a relationship and I have never married or gotten divorced, I am still happy that we learnt about divorce in this podcast episode. Since a lot of psychological knowledge will always be useful to us even if it doesn’t fully impact us when we first read it. In the future, I might be working with a client, a peer or a friend who’s going through a divorce and because of this podcast episode, I now have a better idea about how to support them.
No one should ever deny that divorce is immensely stressful and it can seriously harm your mental health, but it will not be forever. It is more than possible to recover from divorce, but not only that, but thrive after divorce too.
I always like to remember the sort of saying that when one door shuts, another opens. Yet I equally like the idea that after your divorce you can run into the future free, happy and excited to see what the next chapter in your story will bring you.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Social Psychology Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading
Caksen, H. (2022). The effects of parental divorce on children. Psychiatriki, 33(1), 81-82.
Frimmel, W., Halla, M., & Winter-Ebmer, R. (2024). How does parental divorce affect children’s long-term outcomes?. Journal of Public Economics, 239, 105201.
Hald, G. M., Ciprić, A., Sander, S., & Strizzi, J. M. (2022). Anxiety, depression and associated factors among recently divorced individuals. Journal of Mental Health, 31(4), 462-470.
Mortelmans, D. (2020). Divorce in Europe: New insights in trends, causes and consequences of relation break-ups (p. 370). Springer Nature.
Mortelmans, D. (2020). Economic consequences of divorce: A review. Parental life courses after separation and divorce in Europe, 23-41.
Mphaphuli, L. K. (2023). The impact of dysfunctional families on the mental health of children.
Obeid, S., Al Karaki, G., Haddad, C., Sacre, H., Soufia, M., Hallit, R., ... & Hallit, S. (2021). Association between parental divorce and mental health outcomes among Lebanese adolescents: results of a national study. BMC pediatrics, 21(1), 455.
Sbarra, D. A. (2015). Divorce and health: Current trends and future directions. Psychosomatic medicine, 77(3), 227.
Sbarra, D. A., & Coan, J. A. (2017). Divorce and health: Good data in need of better theory. Current opinion in psychology, 13, 91-95.
Sbarra, D. A., & Whisman, M. A. (2022). Divorce, health, and socioeconomic status: An agenda for psychological science. Current opinion in psychology, 43, 75-78.
Sbarra, D. A., Law, R. W., & Portley, R. M. (2011). Divorce and death: A meta-analysis and research agenda for clinical, social, and health psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(5), 454-474.
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