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(Source: The Howard Center.)  

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

...No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

(Source: Abraham Lincoln, "Proclamation of Thanksgiving," October 3, 1863 [by William H. Seward]; in Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt and Lloyd A. Dunlap, eds., The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, Illinois; Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 6, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953, p. 496-7; http://www.hti.umich.edu/.) 

Crusaders for better mental health speak often of how mental health could improve if only policymakers would expand government psychology programs and insurance executives would enlarge policy benefits for therapy. Strangely, they say little about how much the nation's mental well-being might benefit if marriage bells rang more often and divorce courts convened less frequently. But to see how a national renascence in matrimony could translate into better psychological health, Americans need only turn to a recent issue of the Journal of Social Issues. There American and Japanese scholars report the findings of their joint investigation into the effects of social ties on depression among adults age 60 and over, a rapidly growing segment of the population in both countries.

Parsing nationally representative survey data from both the United States and Japan, the authors of the new study find that "marriage was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms in both the Japanese (p < .05) and U.S. (p < .01) samples." As the researchers expected, "having a spouse has a stronger impact on depressive symptoms in the United States than in Japan" (p < .05). The researchers had indeed anticipated that wedlock would do more to foster good mental health in America than in Japan because "intimacy with one's spouse is weaker in vertical societies (such as Japan) relative to horizontal societies (such as the United States)." Still, the statistical results clearly underscore "the importance of spousal presence in mitigating the expression of depressive symptoms...even in a vertical society" such as Japan.