Asthma at the age five and the trauma of the disease can put a child at a higher risk of mental problems like anxiety and depression later, researchers reveal.
A team of researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and Columbia University in New York looked at data that included nearly 3000 mothers and their children.
By monitoring the participants from five to 17 years, UWA psychologist and co-author Dr. Monique Robinson found asthma at the age of five putting children at a higher grip of mental and developmental problems like anxiety, conduct and affective problems later.
"We were interested in understanding the link between asthma in early childhood and mental health problems later on as little is known about the relationship," Robinson said in a news release. "We looked at whether the link was present for mild as well as severe asthma, and whether the link depended on asthma symptoms being persistent throughout childhood as opposed to asthma that lessens as the child grows older."
However, children with history of mild asthma were not found having any significant mental problems compared to children with severe or persistent asthma.
Similarly, the risk was found higher among children whose asthma developed later in childhood than the children whose symptoms reduced as they grew older.
"The link with mental health was not present when children had asthma early in life but grew out of it by later childhood. However, children whose asthma developed later in childhood were at risk for internalizing mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, somatic problems but not externalizing problems like behavior issues," Dr. Robinson said.
According to the researchers, the mental struggle and challenges the child undergoes while dealing with the disease lead to the occurrence of various psychological issues not due to asthma itself.
"We did find that as children got older, the likelihood that they would experience a mental health problem decreased, perhaps indicating that as children get older they are better able to adjust to their asthma without experiencing psychological difficulties," Dr. Robinson said.
Findings of the study published in Psychological Medicine, also urged the health practitioners to make the psychological functioning tests compulsory for children with a chronic or severe disease, to avoid this occurrence.
