Currently, one-third of girls in South Asia are married before the age of 18, and 8 percent before 15 years with India accounting for a third of child brides globally

There is a reciprocal relationship between poor mental health and early marriage in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two most populous states of India, says the latest Lancet study.

“The higher proportion of newly married girls with mental health problems at the study outset might be related to pre-existing difficulties including disengagement from education and family stressors,” the study finds. “A higher proportion of married girls who experienced abuse had moderate to severe depressive symptoms.”

According to the study, half of the girls experienced some form of abuse in their marriages, with 20 percent suffering emotional abuse, 24 percent physical assault, and 36.2 percent facing sexual exploitation.

The study argues that legislative measures such as increasing the legal age of marriage for girls might not be very helpful. It calls for integrating the social, emotional and mental health needs of girls into programs and policies focused on child marriage.

“Our study illustrates the importance of integrating mental health perspectives into programming targeting child marriage,” the research adds. “Equally, a narrow focus on mental health and suicide prevention, without taking into consideration the broader context of early marriage and inequitable gender norms, seems unlikely to be successful in shifting the mental health profile of girls and young women.”

The study suggests that the community based front line workers (officially known as Anganwadi workers) under the country’s Integrated Child Development Scheme should be not only trained to identify common mental health problems but also deliver mental health interventions to adolescent girls.

Currently, one-third of girls in South Asia are married before the age of 18, and 8 percent before 15 years. India accounts for a third of child brides globally with 16 percent of adolescent girls aged 15–19 currently married. There has been much speculation about the mental health consequences of early marriage, defined as marriage before 18 years of age for girls, but no research has investigated the relationship.

In the Lancet study the researchers examined the association between early marriage and mental health in girls using data from Understanding the Lives of Adolescents and Young Adults (UDAYA), a longitudinal study in adolescents in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The baseline survey (wave 1) was conducted in 2015–2016, and the follow-up survey (wave 2) was carried out in 2018–2019.

The study included girls who were unmarried during wave 1 and participated in wave 2 data collection. Information on mental health, suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts was collected at both waves. The association between marrying during the two waves and mental health was estimated using logistic regression with survey weights.

According to India’s National Family Health Survey 2019-2020, the child marriage rates are persistently high in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which with populations of 199.8 million and 104.1 million are 17 percent and 8.6 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population respectively. Around 40.3 percent of women in Bihar and 18.8 percent in Uttar Pradesh were married before 18.