Effects of independent versus dependent stressful life events on major symptom domains of schizophrenia

We evaluated two models to link stressful life events (SLEs) with the psychopathology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). We separated SLEs into independent (iSLEs, unlikely influenced by one’s behavior) and dependent (dSLEs, likely influenced by one’s behavior). Stress-diathesis and stress generation models were evaluated for the relationship between total, i- and d- SLEs and the severity of positive, negative, and depressive symptoms in participants with SSD. Participants with SSD (n = 286; 196 males; age = 37.5 ± 13.5 years) and community controls (n = 121; 83 males; 35.4 ± 13.9 years) completed self-report of lifetime negative total, i- and d- SLEs. Participants with SSD reported a significantly higher number of total SLEs compared to controls (B = 1.11, p = 6.4 × 10^–6). Positive symptom severity was positively associated with the total number of SLEs (β = 0.20, p = 0.001). iSLEs (β = 0.11, p = 0.09) and dSLEs (β = 0.21, p = 0.0006) showed similar association with positive symptoms (p = 0.16) suggesting stress-diathesis effects. Negative symptom severity was negatively associated with the number of SLEs (β = –0.19, p = 0.003) and dSLEs (β = −0.20, p = 0.001) but not iSLEs (β = –0.04, p = 0.52), suggesting stress generation effects. Depressive symptom severity was positively associated with SLEs (β = 0.34, p = 1.0 × 10^–8), and the association was not statistically stronger for dSLEs (β = 0.33, p = 2.7 × 10^–8) than iSLEs (β = 0.21, p = 0.0006), p = 0.085, suggesting stress-diathesis effects. The SLE – symptom relationships in SSD may be attributed to stress generation or stress-diathesis, depending on symptom domain. Findings call for a domain-specific approach to clinical intervention for SLEs in SSD.