Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T02:46:37.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life events and the onset of neurotic illness: an investigation in general practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Brian Cooper  and
Judith Sylph
Brian Cooper
Affiliation:
From the Instituts of Psychiatry, London
Judith Sylph
Affiliation:
From the Instituts of Psychiatry, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

New cases of neurotic illness identified during one month by each in turn of eight general practitioners in a London borough were investigated by means of standardized clinical and social interviews. When compared with a matched control group of consulting patients, the index group was found to have experienced significantly more life events during the three months before the onset of illness. Events particularly associated with neurotic illness were unexpected crises and failure to achieve various life goals. The distribution of events suggested that serious, threatening events have an important aetiological role; minor events appear to play a small contributory part which may become critical when the morbid risk is already high. The problems of method involved in this type of investigation are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , November 1973 , pp. 421 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Brandon, S. (1970). Crisis thcory and possibilities therapeutic intervention. British Journal of psychiatry, 117, 627–633.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., and Birley, J. L. T. (1968). Crises and life changes and the onset of schizophrenia. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 9, 203–214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., and Birley, J. L. T. (1970). Social precipitants of severe psychiatric disorders. In Psychiatric Epidemiology, pp. 321–325. Edited by Hare, E. H. and Wing, J. K.. Oxford University Press: London for Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust.Google Scholar
Brown, G. W., Sklair, F., Harris, T. O., and Birley, J. L. T. (1973). Life-events and psychiatric disorders. I. Some methodological issues. Medicine, 3, 74–87.Google ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., Harris, T. O., and Peto, J. (1973). Life events and psychiatrie disorders. 2. Nature of causal link. Psychological Medicine, 3, 159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, B. (1972). Clinical and social aspects of chronic neurosis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 65, 509–512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cooper, B., Fry, J., and Kalton, G. (1969). A longitudinal study of psychiatric morbidity in a general practicc population. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 23, 210–217.Google Scholar
Cooper, B., and Shepherd, M. (1970). Life change, stress and mental disorder: the ecological approach. In Modern Trends in Psychological Medicine, 2, pp. 102–130. Edited by Price, J. H.. Butterworths: London.Google Scholar
Coppen, A., and Walk, A. (eds.) (1963). Recent Developments in Affective Disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry Special Publication No. 2.Google Scholar
Granville-Grossman, K. L. (1968). The early enviroment in affective disorder. In Recent Development in Affective Disorderspp. 65 79. Edited by A. Coppen and A. Walk. British Journal of Psychiatry Special Publication No. 2.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. P., and Blackwell, B. (1970). Psychiatric illness in general practicc. A detailed study using a new method of case identification. British Medical Journal, 2, 439–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, D. P., Cooper, B., Eastwood, M. R., Kedward, H. B., and Shepherd, M. (1970). A standardized psychiatric interview for use in community surveys. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 24, 18–23.Google ScholarPubMed
Hare, E. H. (1967). The epidemiology of schizophrenia. In Recent Developments in Schizophrenia, pp. 9–24. Edited by A. Coppen and A. Walk. British Journal of Psychiatry Special Publication No. 1.Google Scholar
Harvey-Smith, E. A., and Cooper, B. (1970). Patterns of neurotic illness in the community. Journal of the Royal Collrge of General Practitioners, 19, 132–139.Google ScholarPubMed
Horney, K. (1937). The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. Norton: New York.Google Scholar
Paykel, E. S., Myers, J. K., Dienelt, M. N., Klerman, G. L., Lindenthal, J. J., and Pepper, M. P. (1969). Life events and depression. A controlled study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 21, 753–760.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shepherd, M., Cooper, B., Brown, A. C., and Kalton, G. (1966). Psychiatrie Illness in General Practice. Oxford University Press: London.Google Scholar
Steinberg, H. R. and Durell, J. (1968). A stressful social situation as a precipitant of schizophrenic symptoms: an epidemiological study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 114, 1097–1105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed