Recent life events and psychiatric disorder in children: the interaction with preceding extreme adversity.

This prospective study investigated the role that life events play in causing emotional and behavioural problems in a population of 240 primary school children who had recently survived a natural disaster. Life events experienced after the disaster were not found to contribute directly to the number of emotional or behavioural problems when the effect of the disaster was taken into account. This suggested that, in children, life events may not have a simple mechanically additive aetiological effect.