The following study examines the correlation of psychosocial stress and disease activity in patients suffering from chronic inflammatory bowel diseases. 70 patients with Crohn's disease and 44 patients with ulcerative colitis took part in this study. Using an inventory for the registration of life-changing events, psychosocial life-events of the last 24 months were inquired. The disease activity was registered by an activity index created for this particular purpose. Due to the formulation of the question, pure subjective data were not considered. With regard to the social data, the two samples can very well be compared with other epidemiological studies. For the group of Crohn-patients, a significant correlation between psychosocial stress and a subsequent increased disease activity was demonstrated. Surprisingly, the group of patients with ulcerative colitis did not show this correlation.