Summary:
Review of a study that shows that life events, both negative and positive, can cause enough stress to weaken defenses against physical illness.
To what extent have life events been shown to be a source of stress"
Life events can play a big part in causing stress. They don't have to be big negative events such as getting a divorce or a spouse dying but also normally good events such as holidays or getting married can also be stressful.
Holmes and Rahe (1967) studied into life events as a source of stress. They had noticed that certain life events in their patients, which seemed to be associated with stress and poor health. They noticed that these events in particular could be characterised as those that involved change from a steady state, such as getting divorced or moving house. However they also noticed that positive events, such as getting married, seemed to be associated with stress in their patients. They suggested that the changes associated with major life events absorb psychic energy, leaving less available for other matters such as physical defence against illness. Holmes and Rahe demonstrated this by creating the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). It consisted of 43 events and ratings of how stressful they were, then they asked respondents to say which had happened to them over the last six months. They then added up the event ratings, which gave them a life event score. Their results were that participants who had a life event score over 300 life score units over a period of 1 year were more at risk from physical illness and heart attacks.
This therefore shows that life events can be shown to be a source of stress. However there are numerous problems with Holmes and Rahe's evidence obtained from their study. Firstly it isn't always easy to know whether life events have caused stress related illness at times, or whether it was stress that caused the life events, such as divorce. For example stress may cause a change in eating habits, but a change in eating habits won't cause stress. Another problem with the study is that the impact of life events varies from person to person depending on things such as personality types or whether they are already stressed from something else. Another example is a person who gets a divorce may find it easy to cope with if they have already developed an intimate relationship with somebody else. Martin (1989) did research in to the SRRS study; he said that the scale tends to muddle together different types of events, most particularly those you have some sort of control over.
Anita DeLongis et al (1982) found that the life events research studies had a weak correlation between life events and illness. She said that an alternative would be to focus on the on going stresses of everyday life or 'hassles.' DeLongis says that it is these that are more likely to cause stress.
Another investigation done by DeLongis on the SRRS model and the relationship between hassles and physical health. They created a new scale but suffered the same difficulties as the SRRS model therefore meaning that these scale approaches to stress are unworkable.
So overall there is clearly a link between life events and stress as Holmes and Rahe showed. Things such as divorce and moving house can be obviously stressful things. However the SRRS model that Holmes and Rahe created can be criticised for it's weakness in correlation between stress and illness, also individual differences effect the degree of stress suffered and also other factors such as whether another thing balances out the distress you could be feeling. So there is a link between life events and stress but evidence of this is difficult to back up strongly.
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