Connections of marital satisfaction with mental health symptoms, personality and religion among Muslims

Marital Satisfaction (MS) directly relates to the quality of life. Understanding factors that affect MS can help building healthy relationships. MS is affected by a number of factors including cost attribution, synchrony among physiological systems, personality traits, mate value, communication pattern, social support, violence, spousal mate guarding, spousal susceptibility to infidelity and attachment styles (Bradbury, Fincham, & Beach, 2000). Despite the fact that the couples’ conditions of mental health (such as personality disorder, ADHD and daily anxiety) are closely linked to their MS (Whisman, Uebelacker, & Weinstock, 2004), their role on MS is rarely studied particularly in Muslim populations (South, 2014). Studying the cumulative effects of mental health symptoms altogether, and their interactions, at one time could be an advantage compared to examining one or two variables in a single study. The aim o the study is to determine the associations between mental health symptoms and the quality of MS among Muslims checking the roles several demographic variables such as gender, age, religiosity among others. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected non-randomly (using snow-ball and convenience sampling method) from 231 Turkish married individuals (age range18-65). Marriage satisfaction was measured with ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale (Fowers and Olson, 1993). The mental health symptoms were measured using the tools of (a) the scales of DSM-5 Self-Rated Level 1 Cross-Cutting Symptom Measure—Adult and (b) The Personality Inventory for DSM-5—Brief Form (PID-5-BF)—Adult (American Psychiatric Association (2007). The tools covered a wide range of symptoms mentioned below. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlations, and multiple linear regressions. To the results, MS was negatively and moderately (p ranges between < 05 to < .001) affected by the symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatoform disease, (anti-social) personality, anger, suicide ideation, sleep disturbance, dissociation, memory problem, disinhibition, psychoticism, negative affect, detachment and antagonism. It revealed no or very low correlations with mani, psychosis, and OCD. However, considered all together, as hierarchical regression analysis showed, it is particularly depression (p = .006), suicide ideation (p = .037) and, though slightly, antagonism (p = .067) that have obvious impacts on MS among other symptoms which, altogether, explained %18 of the MS. It is concluded the symptoms of most mental health disorders have low to moderate connections with MS. However, taken all together, only three out of these variables, i.e., depression, suicidal ideation and antagonism, explained the variability in the MS