Introduction

In the Aftermath of the Pandemic ◽

10.1093/med-psych/9780197554500.003.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-4

Author(s):

John C. Markowitz

Keyword(s):

Posttraumatic Stress ◽

Life Events ◽

Interpersonal Psychotherapy ◽

Psychological Consequences ◽

Life Changes ◽

Major Life ◽

Interpersonal Therapy ◽

Life Event ◽

Event Based ◽

Anxiety Depression

The introduction sets the stage for the book to follow: it describes the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic; the losses, risks, and life changes it is entailing; and their psychological consequences. A crisis evokes strong, distressing feelings and symptoms. The introduction presents interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), a proven, time-limited treatment for mood, anxiety, and posttraumatic disorders, as likely to be a helpful response to this crisis. IPT is a life event–based therapy for symptoms due to an overwhelming global series of life events. The brief introduction alerts the reader to the main psychiatric consequences of major life disruption and trauma: anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress, which succeeding chapters will cover. It describes the forced switch to tele-psychotherapy and provides a rationale for why interpersonal therapy is likely to benefit many people sustaining these losses.

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In the Aftermath of the Pandemic

10.1093/med-psych/9780197554500.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

John C. Markowitz

Keyword(s):

Posttraumatic Stress ◽

Life Events ◽

Effective Vaccine ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Life Event ◽

Social Lives ◽

Treatment Research ◽

Trauma Disorders ◽

Anxiety Depression ◽

Second Wave

The Covid-19 pandemic is an ongoing disaster on a scale no one living can recall. Since the end of 2019, it is causing not only countless deaths and physical debility, but also extraordinary social disruption, changing every aspect of people’s working and social lives. As a consequence, in the wake of the virus has come a second wave of psychiatric consequences, mostly prominently anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress. This flood of illness and distress will likely continue at least until an effective vaccine is found and distributed and, even then, will leave psychic scars. How best to treat the slew of psychiatric suffering from such tragedy or, indeed, from any ongoing disaster? Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is an evidence-based, time-limited, affect- and life event–focused psychotherapy, repeatedly tested in more than forty years of treatment research and shown to help patients with mood, anxiety, and trauma disorders. With adaptation to the particular current conditions, IPT appears an excellent fit for the strong feelings and symptoms arising from these horrific life events. his manual by Dr. John Markowitz, a leading IPT expert, equips therapists to treat the most common psychiatric consequences of the pandemic.

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Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Cancer

Psycho-Oncology ◽

10.1093/med/9780190097653.003.0059 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 459-469

Author(s):

Jennifer Sotsky ◽

Hayley Pessin ◽

John C. Markowitz

Keyword(s):

Breast Cancer ◽

Life Events ◽

Interpersonal Psychotherapy ◽

Case Vignette ◽

Medical Illness ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Major Life Events ◽

Major Life ◽

Patients With Cancer ◽

Existing Data

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is an evidence-based, time-limited, and affect-focused psychotherapy that was developed 50 years ago for major depression and has now been expanded to treat other mood and nonmood disorders, including in patients with cancer, in a variety of settings worldwide. Core principles of IPT include that depression often occurs in the context of major life events and that it is a medical illness that is not the patient’s fault. This chapter will first describe the background and development of IPT, then discuss the research on efficacy of IPT in patients with cancer and other medical illnesses as well as limitations of the existing data. It will outline principles of IPT and illustrate the major phases of treatment with basic techniques through use of the case vignette of “Ms. A,” a patient with breast cancer and depression. Lastly, it will review relevant adaptations of IPT including interpersonal counseling (IPC), an abbreviated version of IPT for less psychotherapeutically trained clinicians that has been studied in psycho-oncology patients. Though data on psychotherapy in patients with cancer remain limited, IPT appears to be a practical and promising option that warrants current use and further study.

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The Social Origins of Depression and the Role of Meaning

Understanding Social Change ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197263143.003.0010 ◽

2005 ◽

Author(s):

George W. Brown

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

Depressive Disorder ◽

Life Events ◽

Depressive Disorders ◽

Major Life Events ◽

Major Life ◽

Life Event ◽

The Social ◽

Role Based

This chapter discusses the role of social factors in ill health, with a particular focus on depression. Major life events increase the risk of most depressive disorders. In a longitudinal study carried out in the early 1980s of 400 mothers in Islington, 1 in 10 developed a depressive disorder within a year, and most of those had a severely threatening life event not long before. This chapter also summarises the three forms of meaning relevant for the aetiology of depression. First, the role-based meanings of severe events relate to traditional anthropological and sociological concerns. Second, the evolutionary-derived meanings show that the experience of humiliation following a severe event is critical in the development of depression. Finally, the memory-linked emotional schemas influence a person's vulnerability to events.

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Stability and Change of Perceived Characteristics of Major Life Events

10.31234/osf.io/2yzcs ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Haehner ◽

Sarah Kritzler ◽

Ina Fassbender ◽

Maike Luhmann

Keyword(s):

Life Events ◽

Big Five ◽

Continuous Time ◽

Rank Order ◽

Well Being ◽

Major Life Events ◽

Major Life ◽

Life Event ◽

Stability And Change ◽

The Stability

The occurrence of major life events is associated with changes in mental health, well-being, and personality. To better understand these effects, it is important to consider how individuals perceive major life events. Although theories such as Appraisal Theory and Affective Adaptation Theory suggest that event perceptions change over time and that these changes are relevant for personality and well-being, stability and change of the perceptions of major life events have not been systematically examined. The present paper aims to fill this gap using data from a longitudinal study (N = 619 at T1). In this study, participants rated nine characteristics of the same major life event up to five times within one year with the Event Characteristics Questionnaire. We estimated rank-order and mean-level stabilities as well as intraclass correlations of the nine life event characteristics with continuous time models. Furthermore, we computed continuous time models for the stability of affective well-being and the Big Five personality traits to generate benchmarks for the interpretation of the stability coefficients. Rank-order stabilities of the life event characteristics were lower than for the Big Five, but higher than for affective well-being. Furthermore, we found significant mean-level changes for the life event characteristics extraordinariness, change in world views and external control. Most of the variance in life event characteristics was explained by between-person differences. Future research should examine whether these changes in perceived event characteristics are associated with changes in other constructs and which factors contribute to the stability and change of perceived event characteristics.

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Social Trust and Children Born of War

Social Change Review ◽

10.1515/scr-2015-0005 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 185-212 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bogdan Voicu ◽

Ingvill C. Mochmann

Keyword(s):

Life Events ◽

Social Trust ◽

Research Direction ◽

The Other ◽

Theoretical Level ◽

Hidden Populations ◽

Major Life ◽

Life Event ◽

Post Conflict ◽

Peculiar Characteristic

AbstractThis paper considers two assumptions commonly used in analyzing the formation of social trust. They stress the importance of early socialization, on one hand, and of life events, on the other. We consider birth as a major life event for anyone and focus on the situation of Children Born of War. This group, even if lesser visible in some societies, has the peculiar characteristic to be born and socialized in very specific conditions. Typically, these people are the offspring of foreign soldiers, and local women. They may bear stigma, might be marginalized in family, school and society, and might develop a low level of generalized trust even if they may have lived all life in a culture rich in social trust. We explore at theoretical level their case, bring in a few statistics, and suggest a research direction that may be fruitful in learning about both such hidden populations and about social trust. In the end, we argue upon the importance of the topic for post-conflict societies.

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How Are Common Major Live Events Perceived? Exploring Differences Between and Variability of Different Typical Event Profiles and Raters

10.31234/osf.io/fncz3 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sarah Kritzler ◽

Andrew Rakhshani ◽

Sophia Terwiel ◽

Ina Fassbender ◽

Brent Donnellan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Events ◽

Personality Change ◽

Subjective Ratings ◽

Major Life Events ◽

Major Life ◽

Life Event ◽

Common Life ◽

Individual Perceptions ◽

Different Types ◽

Typical Event

Research on major life events and personality change often focuses on the occurrence of specific life events such as childbirth, unemployment, or divorce. However, this typical approach has three important limitations: (1) Life events are typically measured categorically, (2) it is often assumed that people experience and change from the same event in the same way, and (3) external ratings of life events have unknown levels of validity. To address these limitations, we examined how common life events are typically perceived, how much perceptions of life events vary within events, and how well external ratings of events correspond to subjective ratings from people who experienced the events. We analyzed ratings of nine psychologically relevant characteristics of 10 common major life events from three different types of raters (N = 2,210). Each life event had a distinct subjectively rated profile that corresponded well to external ratings. Collectively, this study demonstrates that life events can be meaningfully described and differentiated with event characteristics. However, people’s individual perceptions of life events varied considerably even within events. Therefore, research on major life events and their associations with personality change should incorporate individual perceptions of the events to advance the understanding of these associations.

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Categories of Depression: Reported Life Events in a Controlled Design

The British Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.1192/bjp.147.6.641 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 147 (6) ◽

pp. 641-646 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

Traolach S. Brugha ◽

Ronan Conroy

Keyword(s):

General Practice ◽

Life Events ◽

Case Control Study ◽

Case Control ◽

Major Life ◽

Life Event ◽

Major Life Event ◽

Control Study

In a case control study, 32 onset cases of depression, separated into PSE-CATEGO Categories N and R, were compared with individually matched symptom free general practice attenders. Combining both categories of depressives together a significantly greater number reported an Undesirable Life Event and a Threatening Life Event in the six months prior to onset, compared with their matched controls. Significantly more CATEGO R (retarded or endogenous) depressives reported an Independent Threatening event than their matched controls. These findings do not support the view that depression secondary to a major life event is more likely to be mild in character.

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