Upon completing the Holmes-Rahe stress inventory test, I found that I am 50% likely to suffer from a major health breakdown within the next two years as I received a score of 297. This could be understandable due to the fact that I am currently stressed and worried about university as well as other personal issues I happening in my life at the moment. These issues, especially feeling stressed about university, will most likely worsen and help cause this major breakdown. I feel that 50% is quite high and it worries me that this is quite likely to happen. Having had quite a few changes happen in my life within the past year, I feel that stress was inevitable and I am not surprised at the result I received. I am aware that these changes have had a significant impact on my life as I have left school and came to university, which is a completely different environment and requires me to be much more independent, and I have also lost a lot of friends due to leaving school. This is something which everyone expects to happen but is nonetheless still damaging to oneself. Some of the life events listed on the Holmes-Rahe test which I found applied to me are a lack of sleep, the revision of personal habits and a major change in social activities. I have found that since attending university, I have lost several hours of sleep per night from my usual routine as I try to balance uni, work and my social life. However, my social habits have still suffered as a result of time management and prioritising. This is something which causes me stress as I do not see my friends or family as much as I would like to.

The Glasgow Effect was a measurement of the poor health, poverty and deprivation rates in Glasgow compared to that of two other cities in England. The study found that Glasgow did indeed have the highest rate of each aspect studied, thus showing that their hypothesis was correct. It was found that the gap between life expectancies in the most deprived and affluent areas was increasing due to the poor health and poverty. ‘SHeS’ data was used to investigate differences between dietary habits in Glasgow and other areas of Scotland. It was found that poor health was partly a result of poor diet, alcohol consumption, obesity and smoking. This showed why the mortality rate for those in Glasgow was lower than that of other areas in the UK.

Overall, researchers found that they do indeed believe there is a ‘Glasgow Effect’. However, they mentioned that they cannot be completely sure or rove that this is the case due to not having enough evidence to do so and there maybe being other explanations as to why the poor health rate, deprivation and poverty levels are higher.