A new study in Psychological Science suggests that interpersonal conflict in relationships might raise key inflammatory markers that increase your risk of developing depression, over time.
As such, it represents empirical evidence for the Social-Signal-Transduction theory of depression.
Of course, it has the ring of truth — if you fight a lot in your interpersonal relationships, pretty much anyone would guess that might lead to depression.
But, physiologically, how does it lead to it?
The Social-Signal-Transduction theory suggests it’s based on inflammation from said-conflict.
And now scientists have uncovered some empiric evidence supporting that claim.
Eric Dolan at PsyPost has a great writeup on the study, but here’s a very brief nutshell.
— Researchers took blood samples from 43 healthy couples.
— They then gave the couples a contentious 20 minute problem solving discussion.
— After that, they collected blood samples — 90 minutes and 300 minutes after the conflict.
Findings: The couples that fought more showed greater depressive symptoms one month later, but here’s the fascinating part — ONLY if their blood samples showed greater inflammatory reactivity after the conflict.
In other words, the conflict was only part of the story.
If the couple had conflict without showing inflammatory reactivity in their blood sample, the participants weren’t at greater risk of depressive symptoms.
But conflict + inflammatory reactivity = higher risk of depressive symptoms.
That’s an important point.
You and I both know couples who fight like cats and dogs, but seem pretty happy — both in their relationship and life.
Perhaps it’s because their bodies don’t respond to conflict in an inflammatory manner?
As such, this is a really important contribution to the literature.
Of course, it’s also only one, very small piece of the medical puzzle of depression.
But it adds support to the growing body of evidence that inflammation — no matter the source — plays a huge role in the development of depression.
After all, inflammation from interpersonal conflict seems to be the mediating variable, and not the conflict itself.
Now of course the healthiest thing from a spiritual, bodily, and relational perspective is to work on a relationship to reduce conflict — whether or not your inflammatory markers rise from that conflict.
That’s where therapists, psychiatrists, medication, meditation, prayer, marriage counselors — all those great professionals and numerous evidence-based practices come into play.
***In a seminal paper from 2014, authors George Slavich and Michael Irwin suggested that the elevated inflammatory markers, involved in the Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression, wouldn’t just raise an individual’s risk of developing depression, but could also raise the risk for conditions like asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, neurodegeneration, obesity, and other conditions.
[Screencap: Via Pinterest, one of the most famous memes from Jean Luc Godard’s masterpiece, Pierrot le Fou.]
