Life events: effects and genesis

Abstract

It is more than 40 years since a burst of studies in the late 1960s started what has become a substantial corpus of work, establishing the role of life events in psychiatric disorders (Brown & Birley, 1968; Paykel et al. 1969). Findings depended on advances in methodology. First, came development of a life events questionnaire and a scaling of their stress magnitude (Holmes & Rahe, 1967); then, replacement by more reliable and valid interview methods and better ways of distinguishing major and minor events (Brown & Harris, 1978; Paykel, 1996).

Illness Related Stress Interacts with Perception of the Self as Ill to Predict Depression in Psychosis

“…This finding is consistent with a rich body of research showing that life events, specifically those involving interpersonal loss, loss of self-esteem, or humiliation, are associated with a wide range of depressive symptoms (Birchwood et al, 2005;Paykel, 2003). Possibly, a stronger differentiation between hopelessness depression and "regular" depression would emerge in longitudinal studies examining interactions between a negative attribution style and illness-related stress in psychosis.…”

What predicts depression in cardiac patients: Sociodemographic factors, disease severity or theoretical vulnerabilities?

“…Other studies have demonstrated that although depressed patients report experiencing more life events, depression may actually predispose people to be exposed to further life events, e.g. miscommunication between depressed and non-depressed partners causing further marital conflict (Joiner, 2002;Paykel, 2003;Weissman & Markowitz, 2002). There may also be an element of recall bias, with depressed patients more likely to recall negative events than non-depressed counterparts (Lewinsohn & Gotlib, 1995;Monroe & Hadjiyannakis, 2002).…”

“…has its origin in theoretical proximal causes in CHD patients, then it can be argued that patients are depressed independently of CHD disease severity. Some of the wellestablished theoretical causes of depression in the general population are stressful life events, reduced positive reinforcement, and distorted cognitions (Beck, 1991;Lewinsohn & Gotlib, 1995;Paykel, 2003). These proximal causes of depression have corresponding theories of causality and evidence-based interventions, respectively: interpersonal theory, behavioural theory and cognitive theory (Beck, 1991;Davidson, Rieckmann, & Lesperance, 2004;Kanter, Callaghan, Landes, Busch, & Brown, 2004;Lewinsohn & Gotlib, 1995).…”

Association of Type D personality with increased vulnerability to depression: Is there a role for inflammation or endothelial dysfunction? – The Maastricht Study

“…The pathogenesis of this disease remains to be elucidated but several biological mechanisms have been proposed to increase the risk for depression such as the vascular depression hypothesis (Krishnan et al, 1997), systemic low-grade inflammation (Valkanova et al, 2013), endothelial dysfunction (Cooper et al, 2011) and chronic dysregulations of the HPA axis (Belvederi Murri et al, 2014). In addition, psychosocial 'vulnerability' factors, such as stressful life events (Paykel, 2003), distorted cognition (Beck, 1991) and Type D (distressed) personality (Pedersen et al, 2006), could also contribute to depression.…”