Life events and schizophrenia. A replication.

54 schizophrenic patients paired for age, sex, marital status and social class with 54 normal subjects were investigated with Paykel's Interview for Recent Life Events. The interview covered life events occurring in the 6 months preceding admission to hospital for a schizophrenic episode for the patients and screening for the normal subjects. The schizophrenics reported more life events than the normal controls in the areas of work, health, and social and familial relations, and also experienced more events with a moderate to severe objective negative impact than the latter. While these results confirm the hypothesis that threatening life events can, in many patients, be considered risk factors for the development of an acute schizophrenic episode, they do suggest the need to examine the life event-schizophrenic relation according to a multifactorial approach, such as that provided by the vulnerability model, which includes an evaluation of the role of moderating variables.