most people will agree this will usually be negative. Reflecting this, it gets a whopping 73 out of 100 from Holmes and Rahe. But what if the formal divorce proceedings happen after a long separation? Or after a short marriage? With or without children? In a traditional cultural or religious setting? What if the relationship was abusive? Given the variety of factors that could be involved, can all divorce events really be rated in the same way? Whilst there would always be some negative element of loss, some divorce situations could clearly be far more troubling than others. Or consider pregnancy. It might indeed be very positive if the pregnancy is planned and wanted, and in the context of a good relationship. But if the context is changed, the valence can immediately become stressful, negative and troubling.
We believe all these contextual issues influence the severity of the event, sometimes radically. When checklist measures ignore what is going on around the life event, they are actually ignoring key factors in what it is that makes it negative. They miss the clues to how it is damaging to psychological wellbeing. The life impact of a life event helps define what makes it negative. This has been borne out by studies that use in-depth interviews of life events, such as the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule (LEDS: Brown & Harris, 1978). Events measured in such detail predict psychological disorder such as depression with far more precision than self-report checklists.
Based on the analysis of numerous narrative accounts of life events and their surrounding contexts, we have developed a conceptual model that explains why life events may be experienced as more or less severe and troubling. We uncovered four key areas of psychological need that, when threatened, tend to make an event negative:
- Attachment – events that involve negative changes in close relationships often involving loss or rejection.
- Achievement – events that prevent or hinder reaching a desired goal.
- Security – events that jeopardise physical or mental safety and uncertainty of possession, routine or physical existence.
- Identity – events that compromise how we and others view the self, involving stigma, belonging or physical deterioration.
We believe that how a life event impacts on these four underlying areas is more important than its category, whether, for example, it’s exam failure, mugging, financial loss or relationship break-up. And within these key areas there are important features that increase the likely damage to wellbeing. One is the degree of impact – from mild to marked levels depending on intensity, threat, finality and change involved. For example, an event threatening attachment can be on a continuum from ‘hassle’ (minor argument with partner) to serious negative event (major row), to life-changing (threatened divorce) or trauma (violent attack).
How does this model fit with previous work? Studies have illustrated that other features typify events that are highest on severity and provoke depressions. These include loss (with more or less finality) and danger (threat of future loss), entrapment/defeat (the event underlines lack of escape from a punishing situation) and humiliation (the event is stigmatising) (Brown et al., 1995; Kendler et al., 2003; Harkness & Monroe 2016). So let’s now turn to some examples of how the dimensions of loss, danger, entrapment, humiliation and impact can act to increase negativity in our four key areas of psychological need.
Think of an individual having fertility treatment and the needs that might be affected by this – identity (as parent) and perhaps achievement (i.e. not being able to reach the goal of having a baby). An unsuccessful round of IVF would be considered to have aspects of immediate loss but still contain some hope – the next treatment might be successful. Compare this with being told that after many years of entrapping failed fertility treatments there is nothing left to try. Here, there is a sense of final loss and futility.
Another example, paralysis following a stroke, could 