Anxiety and Emotional Aspect of Bronchial Asthma in School Age Children

Abstract

An examination of 121 children with bronchial asthma (BA) and 226 healthy adolescents aged 12.98 ± 2.80 and 12.36 ± 2.80 years, respectively, was conducted. The aim of the study: to explore the personal and psychological component of BA in schoolchildren. All children were observed to determine the psychological type of personality and emotional stability condition by Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), to evaluate anxiety in the structure of personality by Spielberger test adapted by B. Hanin, and to assess anxiety at school by Phillips’s questionnaire.BA in children was accompanied by severe anxiety reactions with layering on features of mostly disturbing personality, cau­sing emotional discomfort that intensified with increasing seve­rity of the disease and decreased with increased control of the disease. One of the biggest sources of anxiety is the school environment. In all age groups of BA patients, symptoms of general school anxiety were detected, with dominance of two types of temperament: melancholics (32.23 %, n = 39) — emotionally unstable introverts, and cholerics (31.40 %, n = 38) — emotio­nally unstable extroverts in contrast to the control group, where the largest part was represented by emotionally stable extroverts — sanguine persons. Thus, high anxiety and emotional instability in children with BA determine the need of psychocorrention work among this category of pupils to successfully treat them.

Keywords

• bronchial asthma
• children
• psycho-emotional status