title: The role of stress as a precipitating factor of psychiatric illness.
abstract: Fifty-six psychiatric patients were interviewed to obtain a record of life events preceding admission to hospital, using a modified version of the Schedule of Recent Experiences. Two control groups were studied for comparison: medical and surgical in-patients and a "normal" population studied independently by Myers. Psychiatric patients reported a significantly larger number of events than the medical-surgical patients, who, in turn, reported significantly more events than the "normal" population. There were no significant differences in the specific life event histories between groups.
mesh_terms: D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological