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Spend enough time with someone and you start picking up their habits. You might steal their favorite slang, mirror their laugh, or even start looking weirdly alike in photos. According to a massive new study in Nature Human Behaviour, the overlap can go much deeper than quirks. Couples are significantly more likely to share psychiatric disorders than random chance would predict.

Researchers analyzed health data from over six million couples in Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden. Across all three countries, partners were more likely to have conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, schizophrenia, OCD, bipolar disorder, anorexia, substance use issues, or autism. “We found that a majority of psychiatric disorders have consistent spousal correlations across nations and over generations,” the researchers wrote.

The pattern is known as spousal correlation, and it’s usually studied in contexts like education level, political beliefs, or religion. With psychiatric conditions, the causes are a bit murkier. Part of it may be “assortative mating”—choosing partners with traits similar to our own.

Another part is the simple fact of sharing an environment for years, which can blur the line between nature and nurture. And then there’s the reality that dating pools are limited. As the researchers put it, these three influences overlap, making it hard to tease apart the strongest driver.

Long-Term Partners Often Develop the Same Mental Health Struggles—Here’s Why

Interestingly, the similarities weren’t tied to cultural context. Despite differences in healthcare systems and social structures, the results were nearly identical across the three nations. “Spousal resemblance within and between psychiatric disorder pairs is consistent across countries and persistent through generations, indicating a universal phenomenon,” the team wrote.

There are caveats. The study didn’t account for whether people met before or after a diagnosis, and some conditions—like OCD, bipolar disorder, and anorexia—showed variation between countries. Still, the scale of the data makes the overall trend hard to ignore.

The findings also cause concern for genetics. Many studies assume that people mate randomly, which helps scientists separate environmental and genetic risk factors. But if couples with psychiatric conditions are more likely to pair up, then kids born into those relationships may face compounded risks.

“Given the ubiquitousness of spousal correlation, it is important to take non-random mating patterns into consideration when designing genetic studies of psychiatric disorders,” the researchers wrote.

Couples trade inside jokes and bad habits until they can’t tell whose is whose. According to this study, the same may go for psychiatric disorders.

I am alone in a dimly lit room, splayed face down on a table. Megan Thee Stallion’s Mamushi is bumping from a speaker, and on a large screen, two white circles roam up and down an outline of my body.

Am I at an exclusive German sex club at 2am?

Sadly, no. I am in a suburban shopping complex on a Tuesday afternoon, getting a massage from an Aescape robot.

Aescape describes itself as a “pioneering lifestyle robotics company” that is “revolutionizing the wellness industry by introducing exceptional massage experiences”. Put simply, they make robot masseuses: cushioned tables with two large, white, robotic arms that rub your body based on your preferences and preselected programs.

I love massages – I am never happier than when the profane flesh sack I call my body is being kneaded like Wagyu beef. So I opt for a 30-minute “Power Up”, which costs $60 and promises to leave me feeling “invigorated and alert”.

According to the Mayo Clinic Health System, massage therapy can help with a number of conditions including anxiety, depression, sports injuries, digestive disorders, headaches and soft tissue sprains. It can also improve circulation, strengthen the body’s immune response, lower stress levels and increase energy.

But is a massage from a machine as good as a massage from a person?

“There are so many contraptions out there. My mom has a massage chair and I use a Theragun at home,” says Crista de la Garza, a board-certified massage therapist in Colorado. While there can be value in these tools, de la Garza says she is not worried about a robot coming for her job.

First, there are real physical benefits to being touched by a person. During the early pandemic, for example, when people were isolating and social distancing, many reported feeling “skin hunger” – a sense of deprivation and abandonment that comes from not getting enough physical touch.

A 2024 paper in the journal Nature said that receiving touch was “of critical importance” and found that touch interventions helped reduce pain and feelings of depression and anxiety in adults. The paper also found that touch interventions from objects or robots “resulted in similar physical benefits, but lower mental health benefits”.

“It is a powerful thing to be touched safely and appropriately and therapeutically,” says de la Garza.

In fairness, Aescape’s website says it “is not about replacing therapists”. Instead, “it’s about enhancing their work and addressing the industry’s labor shortage.”

“Nothing can replace a human,” the efficient, blond receptionist tells me when I arrive for my appointment. I’m late because of parking woes, but the machine doesn’t care. It’s a regular spa, with manicures, pedicures, human massages and crystals for sale at the front desk. On our way to the robot’s chamber, she says the Aescape has been popular, especially with clients who “aren’t comfortable being touched by a stranger”, she says.

Inside, she hands me a high-compression, Aescape-branded top and leggings to wear during my treatment. Apparently, they help enhance the machine’s “body detection”. I lie down on the table and hold very still while the Aescape scans my body. She shows me the screen controls and an emergency button that I can press if anything goes wrong.

“We haven’t needed that!” she says brightly before leaving me to change.

Once I’m prone and facing the screen, I’m confronted with an array of choices. What kind of music would I like to listen to? Lo-fi ambient jazz, classic rock, or a playlist called “brat”? I can view an unsettlingly detailed outline of my body – they didn’t need to depict my saddle bags so clearly – or soothing videos of the ocean, a snowy mountain or a rainy forest. I can adjust the height of my headrest and change the pressure of the machine.

One of the things that makes de la Garza skeptical about robot massage is that it “makes you think too much”. Getting massaged by a person involves more surrender – the therapist controls most of the experience, she says, and the client can turn off their brain: “The client’s job is to breathe, communicate as needed, and simply be in a relaxed state.”

Indeed, I find myself distracted by the urge to tweak the music and scenery. Do I like looking at snow? It’s OK. Can I relax to the “brat” playlist? No – back to ambient lo-fi. Is that really what my butt looks like? Chilling.

Some friends said a machine massage would make them nervous. What if the powerful robotic arms skewered my soft flesh like a pile of antipasti? I, on the other hand, was more worried it wouldn’t be strong enough, and that my knots of tension would remain coiled and tight.

But the massage is enjoyable. The robot’s blunt, plastic hands are gently warmed. They can’t knead and poke as precisely as human fingertips, but their ministrations feel pleasant. Actually, the hands are more like knobs, roughly the size and shape of small Dutch clogs. It feels a little like someone pressing their fist into your back.

At the end of my session, I feel looser and more relaxed than I had at the beginning. I don’t feel invigorated, exactly, but I do think I could drop into a deep, dreamless sleep.

It is certainly no substitute for a real massage. I like the surrender and precision of a normal massage, and the Aescape can’t massage the head, hands or feet. But if I can see myself going again if I feel particularly sore after a workout, or if I find myself roaming around a suburban shopping center with 30 minutes to kill. It’s relatively cheap, and you don’t have to tip.

The surge in the use of disposable face masks during the Covid pandemic has left a chemical timebomb that could harm humans, animals and the environment, research suggests.

Billions of tonnes of plastic face masks created to protect people from the spread of the virus are now breaking down, releasing microplastics and chemical additives including endocrine disruptors, the research found.

As a result, the very equipment whose use was intended to protect people during the pandemic now poses a risk to the health of people and planet, potentially for generations.

“This study has underlined the urgent need to rethink how we produce, use and dispose of face masks,” said Anna Bogush of Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, the lead author of the study.

It has been estimated that during the height of the coronavirus pandemic 129bn disposable face masks, mostly made from polypropylene and other plastics, were being used every month around the world.

With no recycling stream, most ended up either in landfill or littered in streets, parks, beaches, waterways and rural areas, where they have now begun to degrade. Recent research has reported a significant presence of disposable face masks in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Bogush and her co-author, Ivan Kourtchev, set out to determine how many microplastic particles were released from face masks simply sitting in water, without moving at all.

They left newly bought masks of several different kinds for 24 hours in flasks containing 150ml of purified water, then filtered the liquid through a membrane to see what came out.

Every mask examined by Bogush and Kourtchev leached microplastics, but it was the FFP2 and FFP3 masks – marketed as the gold-standard protection against the transmission of the virus – that leached the most, releasing four to six times as many.

“The particle sizes of MPs [microplastics] varied greatly, ranging from around 10μm–2,082μm, but microplastic particles below 100μm were predominant in the water leachates,” they wrote in their paper, published in the journal Environmental Pollution.

And they made an even more worrying discovery. Subsequent chemical analysis of the leachate found medical masks also released bisphenol B, an endocrine-disrupting chemical that acts like oestrogen when absorbed into the bodies of humans and animals.

Taking into account the total amount of single-use face masks produced during the height of the pandemic, the researchers estimated they led to the release of 128-214kg of bisphenol B into the environment.

Bogush said: “We can’t ignore the environmental cost of single-use masks, especially when we know that the microplastics and chemicals they release can negatively affect both people and ecosystems. As we move forward, it’s vital that we raise awareness of these risks, support the development of more sustainable alternatives and make informed choices to protect our health and the environment.”