stress. The respondent’s stress score is the weighted sum of all the items/life change events in the past one year checked by her/him. Some sample items of the measure are : Life Events Mean Stress Score Death of a close family member Unexpected accident or trauma Illness of a family member Break-up with friend Appearing for examinations Change in eating habits The mean number of stressful life events experienced over a period of one year without producing overt physical or mental illness is approximately two. However, the correlations between life events and susceptibility to any particular illness is low, indicating a weak association between life events and stress.
It has been argued as to whether life events have caused some stress-related illness or whether stress caused the life events and illness. The impact of most life events varies from person to person. Factors such as age at which the event was first experienced, frequency of occurrence, duration of the stressful event and social support must be studied in evaluating the relationship between stressful life events and the subsequent illness episode. injury, the annoying frequent hassles of everyday life and traumatic events that affect our lives.
Life Events Changes, both big and small, sudden and gradual affect our life from the moment we are born. We learn to cope with small, everyday changes but major life events can be stressful, because they disturb our routine and cause upheaval. If several of these life events that are planned (e.g. moving into a new house) or unpredicted (e.g.
break-up of a long-term relationship) occur within a short period of time, we find it difficult to cope with them and will be more prone to the symptoms of stress. Hassles These are the personal stresses we endure as individuals, due to the happenings in our daily life, such as noisy surroundings, commuting, quarrelsome neighbours, electricity and water shortage, traffic snarls, and so on. Attending to various emergencies are daily hassles experienced by a housewife. There are some jobs in which daily hassles are very frequent.