Is Depression Contagious?

In recent years, there have been back and forth studies on the emotional contagion or contagion effect of depression. There does not seem to be a conclusive statement on the contagion effect of mental health conditions, but there are particular studies that have found social interaction plays a role in the prevalence, susceptibility and vulnerability of certain people and their likeliness of depression. Unlike infectious diseases, which have a proven contagion effect and can be directly linked to biological metrics, social contagion of mental health issues have a greater number of variables that throw off the reliability of research studies and metrics surrounding mental health disorders.

In one study, the hypothesis that depression is more likely to co-occur in households was proved by evaluating filled prescriptions for antidepressant medications. Spouses in a household with their partner using antidepressants have a 62.1% higher chance of using antidepressants themselves, with the one year lagged effect being 29.3% and a two-year lagged effect of 15.1%.¹ Another study focused on obesity and found that obesity may spread in social networks in a quantifiable and discernable pattern that depends on the nature of social ties. Moreover, social distance appears to be more important than geographic distance within these networks.²

While previous studies concluded that happiness and depression may be highly contagious across social ties, the latest findings (that evaluated the contagion effect in college students) are consistent with no significant overall contagion of mental health and no more than small contagion effects for specific mental health measures, with no evidence for happiness contagion and modest evidence for anxiety and depression contagion.³ Essentially, in the college roommate study, as well as other recent studies,⁴ the social contagion of depression was disproved.