ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the impact all the interpersonal factors together may have on health and illness, beginning with a review of the available evidence linking life stressors and illness. The measurement of life events as stressors was greatly facilitated by the development of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) by T. H. Holmes and R. H. Rahe. The SRRS is a standardized questionnaire of 43 stressing life events weighted according to psychophysical scaling methods. The reliability of the SRRS as a life stressor measure has been supported by administering the same scale to the same subjects several different times. B. S. Dohrenwend raised the point that a number of the life events listed in the SRRS may actually be part of the illness process itself. When life-event and illness relationships are being investigated, it is important to determine whether it is actual illness or illness behavior that is being measured.
