Life event scaling and psychiatric impairment

The relationships between psychiatric symptoms and life events scaled for the aetiological relevance of Chance, Self and Others were explored in a sample of 220 parents of chronically ill children. Psychiatrically impaired subjects reported a significant excess of life events in each of the three categories, and not just the Self-caused scale. Similar findings occurred when the aetiological contingency scaling were combined with scalings of Distress and Life Change. Impaired subjects reported an excess of Distress and Life Change attributable to Chance and Others, as well as to Self. The correlation between psychiatric symptoms and self-caused events was weaker than the correlation between a) symptoms and Others-caused events, and b) symptoms and the raw number of events. These findings are interpreted as support for the proposition that the relationship between events and symptoms in the present study is not found because of contamination of the former (independent) variable by the measure of the latter (dependent) variables.