Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

"The results were so spectacular," says Dr. Holmes, "that at first we hesitated to publish them. We didn't release our initial findings until 1967." Since then, the Life-Change Units Scale and the Life Changes Questionnaire have been applied to a wide variety of groups from unemployed blacks in Watts to naval officers at sea. In every case, the correlation between change and illness has held. It has been established that "alterations in life style" that require a great deal of adjustment and coping, correlate with illness—whether or not these changes are under the individual's own direct control, whether or not he sees them as undesirable. Furthermore, the higher the degree of life change, the higher the risk that subsequent illness will be severe. So strong is this evidence, that it is becoming possible, by studying life change scores, actually to predict levels of illness in various populations.

Drastic Changes can make people sick