ABSTRACT
In the mid-1970s, George Brown sought to teach me (Ormel) two important lessons. First, he argued that the meaning of stressful life events (SLEs) and longterm difficulties (LTDs) was critical for understanding their relationship with depression so that life stress should not be measured merely by means of checklists. He succeeded in convincing me. Second, he argued that meaning should be inferred from the event, the context in which it occurs, and occasionally from key aspects of the person’s life history which may have background relevance for the experience of the current event. This time he did not convince me, at least not entirely. I still doubt what key aspects can be safely included in the contextual event ratings. Not that I hesitate to take into account, when a woman is sent by her family doctor for the diagnosis of her own breast lump, the fact that her mother’s premature death was caused by breast cancer. My hesitation concerns, in particular, biographical events which were, in part or entirely, due to the behaviour and decisions of the respondent. After all, biography reflects other determinants of depression than events, like personality, and associated coping and appraisal styles. Thus, using biography to rate events might be to confound them with other factors of aetiological importance. This is critical in studies which try to unravel causal associations between personality, experiences, and depression – the topic of this chapter. More specifically, we describe in this chapter some of the work done in Groningen on neuroticism, life events, and depression. We start with an outline of the Dynamic Stress-Vulnerability Model to provide a framework for the interpretation of the empirical findings. Next we discuss the gradual differentiation between the concepts of vulnerability and risk factors, followed by the Groningen research findings. Finally we suggest that LEDS methodology can be used to study the ‘aetiology of present vulnerability’.
