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

一项最新研究发现，夫妻双方在必要的时候斗斗嘴有益于身体健康。

该研究对192对美国夫妇进行了长达17年的跟踪调查。研究发现，夫妻间生闷气的比至少有一方为自己争辩的死亡率高一倍。

研究报告主要撰写人、密歇根大学退休教授欧尼斯特•哈伯格说：“夫妻相处的一个主要问题就是如何调解矛盾。”

“关键问题在于，发生矛盾时你应该怎样去解决它？”

“如果你把怨气憋在心里，耿耿于怀，对对方愤恨不满，而不想办法去解决问题，那就麻烦了。”

之前有研究表明，生闷气会增加患心脏病和高血压等与紧张有关的疾病的风险。

该研究对夫妻之间生闷气以及由此导致的怨恨积聚对总体死亡率的影响进行了探究。

哈伯格及其同事通过问卷调查来测定受访夫妇对他们所认为的“不公平”行为如何反应。

调查结果显示，有26对夫妇双方都生闷气，其余的166对夫妇中至少有一方发泄不满。

生闷气夫妇的死亡率至少为50%，而发泄不满夫妇的死亡率仅为26%。

此外，研究发现，经常生闷气的夫妇17年后双亡的几率为其他夫妇的近五倍。

该研究在美国密歇根州一个以白人和中产阶级为主的小镇开展，其中大多数女性为“家庭妇女”，均出生于美国性革命（美国性革命爆发于20世纪60年代）之前。

哈伯格说，研究人员将对这些夫妇30年后的存活率进行研究分析，这一分析得出的结果会更加可靠。