People who are empathetic are more likely to experience depressive symptoms if their partners also have depression, according to analysis of data from two studies on married couples and caregivers. Empathetic individuals with non-depressive partners generally have fewer depressive symptoms. However, when their partners show high levels of depression, empathetic individuals are more likely to experience more depressive symptoms themselves. The study was published in Clinical Psychological Science.
Empathy is the capacity to understand and share feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another person. An empathic individual is able to put him/herself in the shoes of another without losing sight of one’s own perspective. Empathy plays a crucial role in building and maintaining meaningful connections with others, fostering trust, and promoting a sense of understanding and support. It is very important for the ability to offer comfort, validation, and emotional support to those in distress. Empathy also promotes a sense of belonging and compassion in interpersonal interactions.
However, a growing body of research indicates that empathy might also have adverse consequences for mental health. Empathizing with others can be effortful and costly. It can also lead to heightened stress and negative emotions for the person experiencing empathy.
In line with this, mental health problems have been found to be more common among caregivers, particularly those who regularly empathize with other people’s suffering. The phenomenon of secondary trauma and compassion fatigue are well known among people working in mental health. Over time, constant exposure to traumatic accounts of others can lead to emotional and psychological distress, resulting in symptoms similar to those experienced by individuals who directly experienced the trauma themselves.
Study author Casey L. Brown and her colleagues wanted to examine whether a close relational partner’s depression and anxiety symptoms impact the associations between empathic accuracy and mental health. Participants of the first study were 156 heterosexual middle-aged and elderly married couples in long-term marriages. They were married for 31 years on average. Participants of the second study were 102 Informal caregivers of close relational partners with dementia. They were recruited from the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). 90% of caregivers were spouses, and the remaining 10% were unmarried partners, family members and friends.
In the first study, participants completed assessments of depressive and anxiety symptoms (the Symptom Checklist-90) and an assessment of empathic accuracy. To assess empathic accuracy, the researchers asked each couple to have a 15-minute conversation about an ongoing conflict in their marriage. Researchers recorded the conversation.
Several days later, participants returned to the lab. The researchers showed them the recording and asked them to first rate the valence of their own emotions while watching the recording using a dial that went from extremely negative to extremely positive. They had to constantly adjust the dial so that it represents the valence and intensity of their emotions in the video at that very moment.
After that, they rated the emotional state of their partner in the same way. The measure of empathic accuracy of the participant was the level of agreement between ratings of partner’s emotion given by the partner and the ratings of those same emotions given by the participant. The recordings and empathic accuracy were collected at four time points, over the course of 20 years, starting from 1989.
In the second study, caregivers watched two videos of two different heterosexual married couples and rated the emotions of the person in the video that was marked by a green dot. This was used to assess their empathic accuracy. Aside from that, they completed an assessment of depressive and anxiety symptoms (the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale). The researchers used clinical interviews to assess care receivers’ depressive and anxiety symptoms, diseases severity (the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale) and functional impairments (The Lawton-Brody Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale).
The results of the first study showed that participants with high empathic accuracy whose partners had high depressive symptoms also tended to have higher depressive symptoms. Among these individuals, the association between empathic accuracy and depressive symptoms was positive. Participants with high empathic accuracy whose partners had low depressive symptoms tended to have lower depressive symptoms themselves. In this group, the association between empathic accuracy and depressive symptoms was negative. The association between partner’s and one’s own depressive symptoms was not present in participants with low empathic accuracy. Such associations were not found for anxiety.
he results of the second study confirmed the findings. When care receivers were highly depressive, the more empathetic care givers were, the more depressive symptoms they had. However, when the care recipient had no or few depressive symptoms, higher empathic accuracy of the caregiver was associated with lower depression symptoms. In caregivers with low empathic accuracy, there was no association between care receiver’s and their own depressive symptom severity.
“Although empathic accuracy is typically viewed as beneficial for social functioning and mental health, results from the current studies demonstrate that greater empathic accuracy is linked with worse mental health for individuals enmeshed in a depressive milieu. Findings sound a cautionary note for researchers actively developing and implementing interventions aimed at increasing empathic accuracy because individuals with high levels of empathic accuracy may be more likely to share their close relational partners’ depressive symptoms,” the study authors concluded.
The study makes an important contribution to the scientific understanding of interactions between empathy and mental health. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, the study design does not allow any cause-and-effect conclusions to be drawn from the results. Therefore, it remains unknown whether empathy leads to depression contagion or that depression reduces the level of empathy.
The study, “Empathic Accuracy and Shared Depressive Symptoms in Close Relationships”, was authored by Casey L. Brown, Kevin J. Grimm, Jenna L. Wells, Alice Y. Hua, and Robert W. Levenson.
