ALT It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. – Robert W. Service (1927). The paper by Bhattacharyya et al. (2023) reviewed in this blog examines the correlation between stressful life events and psychosis. The focus of the examination was exposure to, and number of stressful events following the onset of psychosis, and if stressful events impact on relapse. Whereas psychosis regards mental distress shaping thoughts and emotions to the severity of distorting a usual sense of reality, the authors define relapse as a hospital admission. The quote starting this blog, therefore, considers not the great life obstacles but the straw that broke the camel’s back, whereby stress accumulates over time and gradually leads to ill-health.