A group of hospitalized psychiatric patients and a randomly selected non-therapy group responded to the Schedule of Recent Experiences questionniare. In order to determine the magnitude of life change events for the two groups, Life Change Unit totals were derived for the years 1966 and 1967. To test the hypothesis that patients in psychiatric treatment have experienced a quantitatively significant greater amount of life change than a group of non-therapy subjects, an analysis of variance was used to determine whether there were significant differences between the scores for the two groups. For the year 1966, no significant difference was found between the therapy and non-therapy samples. For the year 1967, there was a significant difference between the mean Life Change Unit scores for the two groups. As a result of these findings, it is concluded that an accumulation of life change events may serve to precipitate mental health change, and that that probability of such health change occurring is significantly greater when there is a clustering of life change events during any given year than when such a clustering does not occur.

The thesis provides a survey inquiring about recent life events in children to determine predictive behavior for first grade. It is based on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale.