Illness Experience and Life Stresses in Patients with Irritable Colon and with Ulcerative Colitis

An epidemiologic study in Baltimore from 1960–1964 identified hospitalized patients with inflammatory bowel disease and various control groups. Structured interviews were carried out with 102 subjects with irritable colon, 158 subjects with ulcerative colitis, and 735 subjects in the general population who were not hospitalized. Subjects with irritable colon had consistently higher scores for various social-cultural factors thought to represent life stresses than either the patients with ulcerative colitis or the general population. The group with ulcerative colitis resembled the general population in this respect, except for being significantly more Jewish. Past history of major illness was much more striking in the population with irritable colon than in either the group with ulcerative colitis or the general population. The occurrence of specific events preceding one of these disorders has not been established; this and other studies fail to support the thesis that ulcerative colitis is a paradigm of psychosomatic illness.