Answer to Question 1
Some people are lucky enough to avoid major catastrophes. But nobody can completely
avoid stress. Indeed, change itself may cause stress by forcing us to adapt to new
circumstances. This hypothesis was first proposed by Thomas Holmes and Richard
Rah (1967), who interviewed hospital patients and found that their illnesses had often
been preceded by major changes in some aspect of their lives.
Some of the changes were negative (getting hurt, divorced, or fired), but others were
positive (getting married or promoted or having a baby). To measure life stress, Holmes
and Rah devised the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), a checklist of 43 major
life events each assigned a numerical value based on the amount of readjustment it
requires. Among the events sampled (and the numerical values they were assigned)
were the death of a spouse (100), divorce (73), imprisonment (63), marriage (50), job
loss (47), pregnancy (40), school transfer (20), and even vacations (13).
Answer to Question 2
Contrary to Holmes and Rah's prediction that all life changes result in stress and,
potentially, health problems, research has shown that some changes are more stressful
than others. In particular, negative changes such as divorce produce more stress than
do positive changes such as marriage. In addition, positive changes are less likely to
have negative health consequences.
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