Neuroticism, psychiatric symptoms and life events

Longitudinal data from the 7-year follow-up of the Health and Lifestyle Survey were used to explore the relationships between (1) psychiatric symptoms and neuroticism, and (2) psychiatric symptoms, neuroticism and adverse life events. Structural equations models were developed to represent the relationships and the data were fitted using the LISREL computer package. It was shown that (1) psychiatric symptoms (recent mental state as assessed by the GHQ-30) directly influenced the reporting of neurotic symptoms (measured by the EPI), while trait neuroticism (corrected for the effects of mental state) accounted for roughly 11 % of the variation in psychiatric symptoms; (2) the number of adverse life events experienced in the past year was directly affected by both trait neuroticism and prior mental state and directly affected subsequent mental state. Although mean raw scores on measured variables in the first model were sensitive to age and sex, fitted model parameters were very similar across age and sex groups.