Asthma takes a toll on teens' emotional health

Dealing with asthma can be hard on teenagers' emotional well-being, with problems such as worry and anger being related to poorer asthma control, new research suggests.

The study of 185 11- to 17-year-olds with asthma found that 45 percent said they had felt depressed or "blue" during the past month, while a similar number reported feeling nervous or "uptight."

Overall, researchers found, it was common for asthmatic kids to have emotional symptoms related to their condition, such as feeling angry, uncomfortable or "different" from their peers. Moreover, poorer emotional quality of life was associated with poorer asthma control, as well as more doctor visits and missed school days.

Whether emotional problems caused or resulted from poorer asthma control is not clear, but it's likely that the two are "intertwined," said Dr. Gregory B. Diette, the study's lead author.

He and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore report the findings in the Journal of Pediatrics.

While the physical effects of asthma are clear, Diette told Reuters Health, this study highlights the fact that there is an emotional impact as well.

Asthma management guidelines, Diette added, call for doctors to ask patients about the emotional impact of the disease, but it's not known whether this is routinely done. "On the practical side," he said, what his team found "reminds doctors to evaluate emotional quality of life."

For their study, Diette and his colleagues surveyed asthmatic adolescents and their parents, all whom were enrolled in one of three large managed care plans. They found that in addition to the emotional symptoms kids reported, three-quarters of parents said they had worried about their child's emotional health during the past month.

Based on parents' reports, adolescents with poorer emotional well-being also had more asthma symptoms, more doctor visits for worsening asthma and more missed school days than their peers.

According to Diette, the findings suggest that when an asthmatic teen is showing signs of emotional problems, getting the physical condition under better control may help.

"A good starting point," he said, "is to look at the state of the asthma."

SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics, October 2004.