Using the social readjustment rating questionnaire of Holmes and Raag, in which life events are quantitatively evaluated in terms of the readjustment required in relation to other events, the authors found that 'non-psychotic depressed patients view a wide variety of events as involving a significantly greater adjustment than do non-depressed subjects'. The general persistence of this pattern after discharge from the hospital (when the patients had significantly fewer symptoms), as well as its independence of severity of symptoms, suggests that in these patients the increased weight given the stresses is not a transient phenomenon. The authors could not determine whether this phenomenon is the result of the clinical depression, or perhaps reflects some aspect of the personality of the individuals who develop clinical depression.