Time-varying exposure and the impact of stressful life events on onset of affective disorder.

Stressful life events are now established as risk factors for the onset of affective disorder but few studies have investigated time-varying exposure effects. Discrete (grouped) time survival methods provide a flexible framework for evaluating multiple time-dependent covariates and time-varying covariate effects. Here, we use these methods to investigate the time-varying influence of life events on the onset of affective disorder. Various straightforward time-varying exposure models are compared, involving one or more (stepped) time-dependent covariates and time-dependent covariates constructed or estimated according to exponential decay. These models are applied to data from two quite different studies. The first, a small scale interviewer-based longitudinal study (n = 180) concerned with affective disorder onset following loss (or threat of loss) event experiences. The second, a questionnaire assessment as part of an ongoing population study (n = 3353), provides a history of marital loss events and of depressive disorder onset. From the first study the initial impact of loss events was found to decay with a half-life of 5 weeks. Psychological coping strategy was found to modify vulnerability to the adverse effects of these events. The second study revealed that while men had a lower immediate risk of disorder onset following loss event experience their risk period was greater than for women. Time-varying exposure effects were well described by the appropriate use of simple time-dependent covariates. Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.