A good fight with your spouse could be good for the health, a new study has found.

Couples who suppressed their anger have a mortality rate twice as high as those in which at least one partner stands up for themselves, according to the study which tracked 192 US couples for 17 years.

"When couples get together, one of their main jobs is reconciliation about conflict," said lead author Ernest Harburg, an emeritus professor with the University of Michigan.

"The key matter is, when the conflict happens, how do you resolve it?" he said.

"If you bury your anger, and you brood on it and you resent the other person or the attacker, and you don't try to resolve the problem, then you're in trouble."

Previous studies have shown that suppressing anger increases stress-related illnesses like heart disease and high blood pressure.

This study looks at how suppressed anger and the resulting buildup of resentment in a marriage affects overall mortality rates.

Harburg and his colleagues used a questionnaire to determine how the spouses responded to behaviour that they perceived as unfair.

Both spouses suppressed their anger in 26 of the couples while at least one spouse expressed their anger in the remaining 166 couples.

At least one death was recorded in half the couples who suppressed their anger, whereas only 26 percent of the other couples suffered from the death of a spouse.

And the anger-supressing couples were nearly five times more likely to both be dead 17 years later, the study found.

The study was carried out in a small, predominantly white and middle class town in Michigan and most of the women were "housewives" born before the sexual revolution.

An upcoming analysis of survival rates 30 years later will yield more reliable results, Harburg said

一項最新研究發現，夫妻雙方在必要的時候斗斗嘴有益于身體健康。

該研究對192對美國夫婦進行了長達17年的跟蹤調查。研究發現，夫妻間生悶氣的比至少有一方為自己爭辯的死亡率高一倍。

研究報告主要撰寫人、密歇根大學退休教授歐尼斯特•哈伯格說：“夫妻相處的一個主要問題就是如何調解矛盾。”

“關鍵問題在于，發生矛盾時你應該怎樣去解決它？”

“如果你把怨氣憋在心里，耿耿于懷，對對方憤恨不滿，而不想辦法去解決問題，那就麻煩了。”

之前有研究表明，生悶氣會增加患心臟病和高血壓等與緊張有關的疾病的風險。

該研究對夫妻之間生悶氣以及由此導致的怨恨積聚對總體死亡率的影響進行了探究。

哈伯格及其同事通過問卷調查來測定受訪夫婦對他們所認為的“不公平”行為如何反應。

調查結果顯示，有26對夫婦雙方都生悶氣，其余的166對夫婦中至少有一方發泄不滿。

生悶氣夫婦的死亡率至少為50%，而發泄不滿夫婦的死亡率僅為26%。

此外，研究發現，經常生悶氣的夫婦17年后雙亡的幾率為其他夫婦的近五倍。

該研究在美國密歇根州一個以白人和中產階級為主的小鎮開展，其中大多數女性為“家庭婦女”，均出生于美國性革命（美國性革命爆發于20世紀60年代）之前。

哈伯格說，研究人員將對這些夫婦30年后的存活率進行研究分析，這一分析得出的結果會更加可靠。