About Dr. Rahe

Throughout his medical career Dr. Rahe has conducted stress and coping research studies and has taught these subjects at four different medical schools. He examines the balance in a person's life between their past and current stress loads with their present coping and wellness resources.

As a medical student, Dr. Rahe co-authored the Life Changes Stress Test with Dr. Thomas Holmes. This test remains popular today. You can take Dr. Rahe's updated version of this test, essentially for free, on this site. Life change values for these events have increased substantially over the years. On average, they are 45% higher today than they were in the late 1960s.

Following post-graduate training in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry, Dr. Rahe spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy. There he worked with returned prisoners-of-war from Vietnam as well as with military and civilian personnel held hostage in Iran. He has traveled to the South Pole and interviewed scientists spending a year there - nine months of which were in total darkness. Dr. Rahe has served as a consultant to the United Nations and the World Health Organization regarding war crimes victims in former Yugoslavia. He currently consults to U.S. Army and Navy medical commands on treatment approaches for service men and women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from combat stress.