Life change events as stressors and their relationship to mental health among undergraduate university students.

Abstract

In the present study, 87 male and 91 female undergraduate students (18 to 30 yr. old) were surveyed to determine whether the previously observed inverse relationship between life-change events and mental impairments holds. The Schedule of Recent Experience was used to measure stress to relate results of this study and past findings. The General Well-being Schedule, reliable and internally consistent, was the measure of mental health. Comparison of the scores on recent experiences with normative criteria indicated that 84.8% of the subjects had scores indicative of major life crises. An inordinately large number of participants should have also experienced clinical distress as measured on the schedule; however, the results provide modest empirical support for this assumption. Subsequently, it seems appropriate to question the predictive validity of the life-events approach to research on stress among college students.