Life Events, Vulnerability and Onset of Depression

A prospective study of 400 largely working-class women with children living at home has once again demonstrated the major importance of long-term severe threatening life events in provoking caseness of depression. However, it again shows that only about one out of five women experiencing such an event go on to develop depression at a case level. This paper demonstrates that more sensitive characterisation of severe events can greatly increase the size of this association. This is done both by improving the description of the event itself and by taking into account various ways in which the event can ‘match’ characteristics of the women present at the first interview, well before the occurrence of the event or any onset of depression.