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Accident proneness—A revisit
JournolofPsychosomelicReseorch, Printed in Great Britain.
0022.3999/81/050459-01 $02.00/O Pergamon Press Ltd.
Vol. 25, No. 5, p. 459, 1981.
PSYCHOSOMATIC
MECHANISMS
ABSTRACT ACCIDENT
PRONENESS-A
REVISIT
J . CONNOLLY
Department of Psychiatry, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton A STUDYof life events before accidents will be described. Because of the suggestion that women experience more accidents in the premenstrum than at other times in the cycle, the study was confined to men, and because to be hit by a car might implicate the driver’s as well as the pedestrian’s life events, the accidents studied had to occur to men while alone and without any suspicion of deliberate self-injury. Three hypotheses were explored. The first was that what happens in life before such an accident is irrelevant to its causation. The second was that for some period (to be determined) before an accident men were experiencing more than the going rate of life events and might be contributing to what appeared to be an accident, say in preoccupation following ‘overeventing’. This is the customary finding in retrospective life events research. The events that the researcher is interested in increase in number over some period before the illness he is interested in. The third hypothesis was that for some period before the accident the patient might be experiencing less events than matched comparison subjects and might be contributing to what seemed to be an accident by, say, risk-taking in boredom. The findings of this study will be discussed in the light of a revisit to the ancient notion of accident proneness.
459
0022.3999/81/050459-01 $02.00/O Pergamon Press Ltd.
Vol. 25, No. 5, p. 459, 1981.
PSYCHOSOMATIC
MECHANISMS
ABSTRACT ACCIDENT
PRONENESS-A
REVISIT
J . CONNOLLY
Department of Psychiatry, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton A STUDYof life events before accidents will be described. Because of the suggestion that women experience more accidents in the premenstrum than at other times in the cycle, the study was confined to men, and because to be hit by a car might implicate the driver’s as well as the pedestrian’s life events, the accidents studied had to occur to men while alone and without any suspicion of deliberate self-injury. Three hypotheses were explored. The first was that what happens in life before such an accident is irrelevant to its causation. The second was that for some period (to be determined) before an accident men were experiencing more than the going rate of life events and might be contributing to what appeared to be an accident, say in preoccupation following ‘overeventing’. This is the customary finding in retrospective life events research. The events that the researcher is interested in increase in number over some period before the illness he is interested in. The third hypothesis was that for some period before the accident the patient might be experiencing less events than matched comparison subjects and might be contributing to what seemed to be an accident by, say, risk-taking in boredom. The findings of this study will be discussed in the light of a revisit to the ancient notion of accident proneness.
459