Long-term depression following stressful life events: feeling ‘worthless’ shows the slowest recovery

  • John Simister

Abstract

This paper uses a UK panel study dataset, to investigate effects of stressful ‘life events’ on mental health. Various events – including poverty, unemployment, and illness – increase the risk of depression. There may be delayed effects of a stressful event: many people experience a slow recovery from depression. This paper reports evidence that in ‘General Health Questionnaire’ GHQ-12, feeling ‘worthless’ shows the slowest recovery after a harmful event: up to about nine years. Evidence in this paper is reported as charts, showing gradual recovery from traumatic events; and regression analysis. These charts are broadly consistent with regression results.


Keywords: Depression; life events; slow recovery; GHQ-12; worthlessness

Published
2019-08-01
How to Cite
SIMISTER, John. Long-term depression following stressful life events: feeling ‘worthless’ shows the slowest recovery. Archives of Psychology, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 6, aug. 2019. ISSN 2573-7902. Available at: <https://www.archivesofpsychology.org/index.php/aop/article/view/118>. Date accessed: 09 feb. 2025.

Most read articles by the same author(s)

Obs.: This plugin requires at least one statistics/report plugin to be enabled. If your statistics plugins provide more than one metric then please also select a main metric on the admin's site settings page and/or on the journal manager's settings pages.