A Study on Relations between Life Events and Health States in Infants

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine relations between life events and health states in Japanese infants. The subjects were 719 infants who had all three routine infant health checkups at the age of 3,10 and 18 months. A life event questionnaire, which was Coddington's one with some modifications, and a questionnaire about infant's health states and histories of consulting doctors were administered to their mothers at each health checkup. There was no significant relation between the number of life events/the score of life change unit (LCU) and the number of days of consulting doctors after the events occurred. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were very low (range : -0.003〜0.06). Only one event as to the death of a family member was found to have a signifidant relation to the number of days of consulting doctors. Infants, who had experienced an event of family member's death by the age of 3 months, consulted doctors until 10 months significantly more frequently than infants who had not had such an event (p<0.05). Although there was no significant difference, a similar tendency was found on infants who had an event of removal. It seems that these life events such as the death of a family member and removal have some influences on health states of infants. There was also a significant relation between the score of LCU and the results of health checkup at the age of 18 months. Infants who had high scores of LCU had more problems to be followed than those who had low LCU scores. Interestingly, such a relation was not found between the number of life events and the results of checkup. Therefore, it is necessary to consider both the number and the LCU score in the study of life events. It is concluded that not the quantity but the quality of the life event may have important influences on the life of infant because an infant is influenced by life events indirectly.