oach. We continue to argue that all negative events are likely to affect one of our core psychological needs (attachment, achievement, security, identity) and that furthermore, the dimensions of loss, danger, entrapment, humiliation and life impact enable us to understand further aspects of events, how they are experienced and how they affect our lives – its meaning and enjoyment.
We are currently testing this model using a new online measurement of life events: the Computerised Life Events and Assessment Record (CLEAR: Bifulco et al., 2018). The measure not only gathers data regarding event type and context but also allows individuals to include information about various event attributes. Such detail allows for more meaningful analysis. The online system means events can be gathered on a wide scale and prospectively. We have used the data to quantitatively check whether the attributes we have identified truly are important in helping to differentiate between severe and non-severe life events. At the very least, we hope that by outlining this model researchers using life events should be inspired to think more critically about the measurement tools they use.
What about in the realm of applied psychology? Often a client’s vulnerability and maintenance factors will be examined more closely than the life events that have precipitated their symptoms. And although sometimes it will be obvious why a certain life event might have contributed to a client’s symptomatology, at other times it will be less so. It may be that the client does not spontaneously describe all the events and their accumulation, or outline all the relevant context. They may not see such factors themselves as important. Our approach could serve as a way of thinking further about events that may appear at first glance to have had a disproportionate effect on the client’s wellbeing. It could also enable links between predisposing events and cognitive or historical vulnerabilities to be clearly drawn out during formulation (e.g. a history of rejection or a fearful attachment style, may sensitise to events involving humiliation). Thus, we can devise notions of matching of event to vulnerability.
We hope that having a more sophisticated framework for estimating negative life events will mark a new phase for life events in psychological research and related clinical practice. Much like the ongoing debate between a dimensional rather than categorical approach to mental health, perhaps a better understanding of the complex features of life events on a continuum of negativity – rather than as discrete identical categories – would further our understanding of how environments impact individuals. It may also serve to avert stigmatising inferences of weakness in relation to mental health. Let’s seek to better understand the true extent of the damage inflicted by life’s ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.
- Ruth Spence, Lisa Kagan and Antonia Bifulco are at the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, Middlesex University
Illustration: Dominique Duong
Bifulco, A., Spence, R., Nunn, S., et al. (2018). Computerized Life Events and Assessment Record web-based measure of life events: A preliminary study of reliability, validity, and association with depression. JMIR Mental Health.
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