C. Faravelli, S. Pallanti, R. Frassine, B. Guerrini, and G. Albanesi
Institute of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Chair of Clinical Psychiatry, Florence University Medical School, 50134 Florence, Italy

Most of the psychological theories of depression maintain that stressful ex­periences play a crucial role in the etiology of affective disorders. Life events may act at two distinct levels: (a) Events occurring during childhood and/or adolescence would predispose the individual, giving rise to the so-called prede-pressive personality, (b) In the adult life of such individuals stressful events would trigger the onset of a pathologically depressive state. In spite of the variety of methodological problems connected with the mea­surement of environmental events, this model has been given several empirical verifications. For the sake of clarity it is convenient to separate studies referring to the prevalence of early events from those investigating the incidence of recent events.

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