Life events and the 1-year prevalence of major depressive episode, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder in a community sample

Abstract

A community survey was conducted in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in which 3,070 respondents completed the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) and the Life Events Scale (LES) of Paykel. During the year before the interview, there were 222, 234, and 38 cases of major depressive episode (MDE), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and panic disorder (PD), respectively, where individuals may have had more than one disorder. It was not possible to time the onset of the disorder relative to the occurrence of life events, and so correlations, not causal relationships, were examined. The LES score showed an increasing trend across disorder categories defined as follows: MDE and GAD both absent; MDE absent and GAD present; MDE present and GAD absent; and MDE and GAD both present. A similar trend was observed for most of the LES subscales studied, but only in the case of events classified as “entrance”, “undesirable”, and “marital” was there statistical significance. The results suggest that stressful life events are correlated with both MDE and GAD, that individuals with MDE only tend to have a greater burden of stressful events and comorbid disorders than persons with GAD only, and that the presence of both disorders is associated with an even greater level of stress and number of comorbid disorders. The similar patterns across LES subscales suggest that MDE and GAD are not related to specific types of life events, at least not those covered by the LES questionnaire.