A clinical study of the impact of stressful life events in the aetiology of non insulin dependent diabetes mellitus

Background: Since diabetes mellitus was first recognised as a disease, physicians have been aware that emotional factors play an important part in the illness. It was thought necessary that a study on the role of life events as an aetiological factor in non insulin diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) should be conducted in our setup. Material and methods: Clinically confirmed cases of NIDDM were included in the study. Life events were assessed during the three years to six months period preceding the onset of illness. The control group consisted of 50 subjects which were taken from normal general population. The presumptive stressful life events scale (PSLES) was taken to assess the life events of subjects. Means and standard deviations were taken out and Fisher’s ‘t’ test was done in the analysis of life event scoring to see the statistical significance. Results: Fifty patients with NIDDM were studied. Analysing the relation between total number of life events, it was found that there was significant difference between patients with NIDDM and the control (P