Stressful life events and depressive symptoms: disaggregating the effects of acute stressors and chronic strains.

We present evidence indicating that life events checklists may provide information both on eventful stressors and on chronic life strains. By making minor modifications to the probe questions that are asked of respondents, one can obtain additional information to measure the length of stressful experiences so that eventful stress can be disaggregated from more enduring strains. This procedure allows one to estimate the effect of chronic strain on psychological distress separately from the effect of acute stressors. In addition, such modifications provide information on the timing of discrete stressors so that one can assess the effect of more recent stressors as opposed to those that occurred earlier. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the use of checklists to identify chronic strains and the possibility that there are other enduring strains beside those that are role-related.

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