Stressors: Life Changes Life changes are those events that necessitate a major transition in some aspects of our

life. E.g. bereavement Holmes and Rahe (1967) Developed the idea that life changes are linked to stress and illness They observed that major life events preceded physical illness Change requires psychic energy to be used

In order to test the idea that life changes are related to physical illness, they invented the. Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) o o o o Based on 43 life events taken from analysis of over 5000 patient records 400 participants asked to score each event in terms of how much readjustment would be required the average person Participants gave numerical value in relation to marriage which had a score of 50. Scores totalled and averaged to produce LCUs (Life change units)

Rahe et al. (1970) tested the hypothesis that the number of life events experienced would be positively correlated with illness. Method: o o o Military version of the SRRS was given to 2700 men (three US Navy Ships) Men filled out questionnaire just before tour of duty noting all life events experienced in the past 6 months. Illness score was calculated on the basis of the number, type and severity of all illnesses recorded during duty

Findings: o o o Found positive correlation between LCU score and illness score Those men who scored low in terms of their SRE scores also had low levels of illness while at sea. Those with higher scores experienced higher levels of illness

Conclusion: o o It is change, not necessarily negative change, which causes stress which hence causes illness. It is the overall amount of psychic energy required to deal with a life event that creates stress.

Evaluation o Research using the SRRS suggests any life-changing event has the potential to damage health however significant but critics suggests its the quality of the event, with negative ones being most harmful. Sarason (1978) suggests that rather than looking at how many life experiences there are, we need to look at whether these are evaluated in positive or negative terms. He developed the Life Experiences Survey (LES) which takes into account how positive/negative the event is. He argues that positive events are not linked to illness Lazarus (1990) suggests that major life changes are rare and it is the daily hassles that are a more significant source of stress. o DeLongis et al. (1988) studies 75 married couples who were given SRRS and Hassles and Uplifts Scale and found no relationship between life events and health but significant positive correlation between hassles and next day health problems like flu. SRRS ignores the fact that life changes have different impacts on people. Death of a relative for one person may be terrible but for someone else, relief from constantly supporting the relative. People respond differently. Brown (1974) suggests that people with high levels of anxiety would be more likely to report negative life events and would be more prone to illness. SRRs focuses on acute events rather than chronic stress which is far more draining

o o

Validity and Reliability The life changes approach relies on peoples memory but there are concerns that such retrospective reports may not always be accurate and reliable: Brown (1974) suggested that people who are unwell may want an explanation for their illness so are more likely to report stressful events that those who arent ill. E.g. downs syndrome- before the reason behind it was known; mothers of them reported far worse pregnancies than mothers of healthy kids even though they would have no differences during pregnancy. Rahe (1974) found that test-retest reliability depends on the time interval between testing. However most agree, retrospective reports are quite reliable: Hardt et al. (2006) interviewed 10o patients with a history of child abuse with a time lag of 2.2 years between interviews. Results show moderate to good reliability for most childhood experiences.