The relationships between stress and vertigo attacks were studied from the results of a questionnaire (Environmental Change Event Inventory reported by Kobayashi in 1977). In order to make a casecontrol study, 135 normal participants in a multiphasic health examination in Toyama Prefecture (1987) and 42 patients with Meniere's disease who visited our hospital in 1987 were sent questionnaires.
This study revealed the following features:
(1) Patients with Meniere's disease were more stressed than the controls. The subjective weight of a stressful impact in each change event had tended to be greater in the patients.
(2) In one case the frequency of vertigo attacks decreased as the quantity of stress decreased.
These data suggest that stress is closely related to vertigo attacks in patients with Meniere's disease.
