[Reactions to health stress in middle and advanced adulthood]

Psychological reactions and their 'hierarchies' regarding the own health status were analysed in a sample of 81 survivors of the Bonn Longitudinal Study on Aging and in different clinical samples (patients suffering from hemophilia, renal failure, heart infarction, stroke, and schizophrenia). The longitudinal analysis of the health-related response hierarchy points to a high degree of consistency of these reactions over time. Comparing the response hierarchies of the aged sample as related to different areas of life stress (such as housing, income, family, health problems), the author finds a high degree of discriminative competence in coping with stress. The same is true for the response hierarchies of the patient groups. This high degree of situation-specific selectivity in patterns of responses to chronical disease should be studied more intensively from theoretical as well as clinical-practical points of view.