Abstract
Background and Objectives: Psychosocial stress is one of important issues in mental health of all humanbing societies. This study was aimed to determine the ranking order of stressful life events (SLE) among general population of Tabriz – Iran.
Materials and Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study through randomized cluster sampling 600 subjects older than 18 selected and assigned scores between 0-20 to each item on a relatively modified version of Holms-Rahe scale of stress ratings. Appropriate statistical analyses were used to analysis of data.
Results: ''Death of child'' was ranked first and allocated the highest score (mean= 19.75, Std Error =0.005), while'' Summer Vacation'' was allocated the lowest score (mean = 4.06, Std Error =0.23) among 50 stressful life events. ''Death of spouse'' and '' Infidelity of spouse'' was ranked second and third respectively. Jail sentence, addiction, divorce, to stand accused, unsuccessful marriage, son or daughter running away, death of a close family member were included among the top 10 most SLE. Regarding gender differences, males and females shared all 10 events in their top 10 SLE and ranked those events similarly except for 4 items. However compared with males, females significantly gained higher total mean for both top 10 weights and all of 50 weighted (13.04 v.11.48, p=0).
Conclusion: The result show that socio-cultural differences should be noted in using any stress ratings scales, and at individual level some influential factors particularly gender and age differences in weighting of the severity of SLE have to be observed. Despite this, there are yet shared events especially among top 10 SLE in different cultures that own the same stressful effect.