This TED Talk features psychiatrist and author George Blair West, recorded live at TEDx Brisbane, 2017.

Almost 50 years ago, psychiatrist Richard Ray and Thomas Holmes developed an inventory of the most distressing human experiences that we could have.

Number one on the list, death of a spouse.

Number two, divorce, three, marital separation.

Now, generally, but not always, for those three to occur,

we need what comes in number seven at the list,

which is marriage.

Fourth on the list is imprisonment in an institution.

Now, some say number seven has been counted twice.

I don't believe that.

When the life stress inventory was built,

back then, a long-term relationship pretty much equated to a marriage.

Not so now.

So for the purposes of this talk, I'm going to be including de facto relationships,

commonal marriages and same-sex marriages, or same-sex relationships soon hopefully to become

marriages. And I can say for my work with same-sex couples, the principles I'm about to talk

are no different. They're the same

across all relationships. So in a modern society, we know that prevention is better than cure.

We vaccinate against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles. We have awareness campaigns for melanoma, stroke, diabetes.

All important campaigns.

But none of those conditions come close to affecting 45% of us.

45%, that's our current divorce rate.

...