[Life change events preceding acute psychiatric diseases]

A sample of 112 psychiatric inpatients were examined in comparison to 70 somatic inpatients with respect to the question, how frequent psychiatric diseases were in correlation with stressful life-events. There were significant discrepancies concerning life-event stress between the diagnostic subgroups. The life-event stress was most important in the neurotic patients, also patients suffering from endogenous psychoses, especially schizophrenics, showed an increased life-event stress. Different methods (objective stress scores suggested by Paykel, self-rating scores concerning negative experiences, and a synthesis between these two methods) led to similar results. Experiences, rated positive by the patients, showed no correlation with psychiatric diseases.