Life events, abdominal pain and depression in peptic ulcer and depressive disorder

Three patients with documented peptic ulcer and four patients with depressive disorder were followed every month for 10 to 14 months. A life events inventory, clinical ratings of depressive mood and ulcer symptoms, and analysis of the urinary excretion of cortisol and melatonin were used on every occasion. Although the number of patients was small a few tentative findings were made. First of all, associations between life events and depressive mood seemed to be "delayed" more often in the ulcer patients than in the depression patients. Secondly, there were individual associations between cortisol excretion and life events or between cortisol excretion and ulcer symptoms, but these associations seemed to form individual patterns. Two of the ulcer patients who had correlations in the expected directions showed a personality profile close to the one expected from classical literature, whereas the third patient who showed no correlations showed alexithymic traits.