How Divorce Affects Mental Health & How To Protect Yourself

Both physically and mentally, a divorce can be exhausting. Divorce is one of the most stressful events in our lives so it’s unsurprising that it impacts our mental health so much. Whether it is during or after a divorce protecting yourself and your mental health is important. That why you should try to understand how divorce affects mental health and how you can protect yourself during your divorce. 

How Divorce Affects Mental Health

Before we can understand how to protect ourselves mentally through a divorce, we first need to understand how divorce affects mental health.

Below are some truths about mental health and divorce: 

• Behind the death of a loved one, divorce is rated by most as the second hardest issue to deal with mentally during their lifetime. 
• Stress on your mental health can show itself in many people as eating disorders. This is one of the most common mental health problems that occur during divorce.
• Divorcees, especially men, have a suicide rate twice that of those that are married or single. 
• Those who had low conflict marriages were more prone to be depressed after a divorce than those with high conflict marriages. 
• Up to 20 percent of suicides have occurred during a breakup with a significant other within the last few weeks of the breakup. 

These are only of the few mental issues that can arise from a divorce. Stressful situations can manifest in many different ways and affect everyone differently.

5 Ways To Protect Your Mental Health During & After Your Divorce

Now that we know the problems that can occur let’s dive into ways to protect your mental health through a divorce. 

1. Understand the Madness

This may seem a little vague as a concept. The point is not to ignore the fact that breakup and divorce will have an effect on your mental health. You may not know in what form it will come, but knowing that some issues arise can make you prepared to face them when they occur. 

2. Organize Your Life

Divorces can be confusing to all parties. Divorce is simply not something we do every day and the motions of it can be overwhelming. Attaining a lawyer, compromising every little detail, worries for your children, what to wear to court are all just a few things that will come up. 

Having your life organized around you as much as possible will help to get you through the divorce with less stress. In the beginning, concentrate on having your life as organized as possible. First, the work can take your mind off the worry of divorce, and secondly, it reduces the stress of missing an appointment or missing a credit card payment. 

3. Use a Co-Parenting App Like DComply

For those going through a divorce with children, the financial sharing that usually occurs with kids in a marriage can get out of whack. When this happens, those involved can stress over money and how and what bills will be paid. 

By using the DComply co-parenting app, all parties involved can agree and have a platform to share expenses online and a place to record any disagreements that need to be addressed in the future. With organization and the use of this technology, it removes much of the doubt for finances and helps to know you have a place to record any grievances. 

With DComply, you can pay child support, pay bills, send bills, and track expenses. Download it for iPhone here or for your Android device here.

4. Get Out of the House

For many people keeping a large group of friends to hang out with is not as easy as before marriage. You may find that most of your old friends are in their own relationships and not available as they once were. 

If that is the case, don’t worry; there are many groups and functions to attend for people going through a divorce in today’s world. Look online for meetups and group hangouts with similar interests as you. Becoming Social again is one of the best ways to keep your sanity through a divorce. 

5. Seek Counseling Before Issues Arise

If you and your soon to be partner can agree on anything during a divorce, decide together to seek counseling. This doesn’t mean you are seeking counseling to repair your marriage, but especially for those with children, some semblance of a cordial and agreeable relationship must exist. 

Seeing a counselor together as a family or group will go a long way with helping any children cope also. If the children are doing emotionally well with counseling during the divorce, then a lot of stress can be lifted off of both parents. 

How Divorce Affects Mental Health & How You Can Protect Yourself

Going through a divorce does not have to take as much of an emotional toll on our lives as we think. By making sure we understand that we will have some issues to deal with, we can recognize stress in our lives when it occurs. Organizing our lives, using technology to co-parent, and seeking counseling as a family to reduce stress for ourselves and our children will make for a much easier time during the divorce.