daily hassles

Life changes

• Holmes and Rahe 1967 played a key role in developing the idea that life changes are linked to stress and illness.

A major life event = usually results in a physical illness.

Changes can be both negative and positive but because they are changes they could impact health.

Holmes and Rahe 1967

• Developed the social readjustment rating scale (SRRS) to test the idea that life changes are related to physical illness.

• The SRRS was based on 43 life events taken from their analysis of over 5000 patient records.

• To find out the stressfulness of each event they enlisted the help of 400 participants. They were asked to rate each event using the numerical scale of 1-100 to rate how much readjustment would be required by the average person, using marriage as a base line of 50.

• Scores were all totalled and averaged to produce life changes units (LCUs) for each life event.

Rahe et al 1970

• Wanted to test whether the SRRS model could be positively correlated to illness.

• A military version of the SRRS was given to men abroad three US Navy ships- over 2,700 men

• Filled in the form just before tour of duty-noting all the life experiences they had experiences over the past 6 months.

• An illness score was calculated on the…