Stressful life events and community mental health center patients

This paper reports on the occurrence of stressful life events prior to treatment and at a follow-up timepoint in a general sample of community mental health center patients. Life events scores from the patients, at both timepoints, are compared with scores from a nonpatient sample drawn from the community. Results indicate that patients before entering treatment tend to experience more events (particularly undesirable ones that could be confounded with psychological condition) than nonpatients. The result is no longer true at the follow-up time point. Findings regarding life events and patienthood are basically the same whether all events are used (i.e., the change score) or undesirable events alone. If, however, only events judged to be unconfounded with psychological condition are considered, we find no difference between patients and nonpatients at either timepoint. Implications of the study's results for the direction-of-effect issue with respect to the stress-psychological disorder relationship are discussed.