Psychosomatic Medicine 33:115-122 (1971)
© 1971 American Psychosomatic Society

Magnitude of Life Events and Seriousness of Illness

¹ Department of Psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine Seattle, Wash.

Thomas H. Holmes, MD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Wash 98105.

A study investigating the relationship between the quantity of life change that patients have undergone during the 2 years before the onset of their illness, and the seriousness of that illness, is described in this report. The sample represented 42 disease items and 232 patients. Thirty-six percent of the life change for the 2-year period was found during the 6-month period prior to onset of the illness. A significant positive relationship of life events to illness magnitude was found. For the three time periods of 6 months, 1 year and 2 years prior to illness onset, the correlation was 0.302, 0.321 and 0.356, respectively. When the diseases were separated into acute and chronic categories, the latter showed a highly significant positive correlation (r_s > 0.648) in all time periods, while the former, contrastingly, did not.

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