Marriage break-ups are frequently followed by a collapse in mental health for divorced wives and husbands, lawyers have warned.
They said symptoms ranging from high stress to severe depression frequently strike couples engaged in divorce.
In some cases the impact of divorce can contribute to deep problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder or the onset of suicidal thoughts, lawyers at the Hall Brown Family Law firm told the Daily Mail.
Katie Dillon, of Hall Brown, said evidence from clients of the firm, which handles 360 divorces each year, showed that mental health problems appeared to be a result of the ending of the marriage and were not helped by a smooth or amicable divorce process.
The likelihood of mental health problems was not confined to marriage break-ups considered to be problematic, she added.
“That stress can manifest itself in different ways. In the last year or so, noticeably more cases in which we’ve been involved have featured one or both spouses reporting some degree of mental health problems at the very start of the divorce,” she said.