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Life Events, Psychiatric Disturbance and Physical Illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Elaine Murphy  and
George W. Brown
Elaine Murphy
Affiliation:
Goodmayes Hospital, Ilford, Essex and The London Hospital)
George W. Brown
Affiliation:
Bedford College, University of London, 51 Harley Street, London W1N 1DD
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Summary

The relationship between life events and the onset of organic physical illness has been studied in a group of women in the general population. The link between severe events and the onset of organic illness, which held only for women of 50 years or younger, was not a direct causal association but mediated by an intervening psychiatric disturbance of an affective kind, all occurring within a six month period. The findings are discussed in the light of the high psychiatric morbidity found in physically ill patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 136 , Issue 4 , April 1980 , pp. 326 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1980 

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