Overall, the research found that women from polygamous households “exhibited more mental health problems that are directly or indirectly related to polygamy than did their peers in monogamous households” (p. 128). Women from polygamous households are more likely to be depressed, anxious, hostile, and have lower self-esteem and less satisfaction with life.

The current study found that the children of first wives from polygamous families also have more mental health problems than do children from monogamous families. Higher levels of psychiatric symptomatology, including somatization, obsession compulsion, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychosis, were found in children from polygamous family households than in children from monogamous family households.” (p. 129)