DEALING WITH DIVORCE

Exactly a third of marriages in the UK over the past 50 years have ended in divorce. Yet the subject remains taboo, a source of shame for those involved and a trigger for mental ill-health that can last for years if not properly dealt with.

A wide-ranging 2013 study for the American Journal of Men’s Health found that divorced men suffered higher rates of depression, substance use, social isolation and suicide compared with men who were married. And a 2003 study for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, using a wealth of data collected in the United States, found that divorced men were nine times more likely to take their own lives than divorced women.

“Divorce and relationship breakdown is second only to the death of a loved one when it comes to grief,” says Tom Brownrigg, an