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Reiser, Jessica Anne

Psychology

2004

Ph. D.

The relationship between stress and asthma has been well established in both psychological and medical research. However, studies of the relationship between traumatic stress and asthma are less common, especially in pediatric populations. The present study investigated how a prior history of traumatic events may have a cumulative impact on the health-related functioning of children and adolescents with asthma. A secondary focus was to study parental stress and trauma-related variables, namely, mothers' symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and methods of coping, also in association with their children's functional status. Ninety-five mothers of children and adolescents (ages 5 - 18) seeking treatment from two pediatric pulmonary clinics in New Hampshire completed questionnaires and returned them by mail. The mothers reported on their children's exposure to DSM-IV-defined traumatic events and the degree of functional impairments the children experienced as a consequence of their asthma. The mothers also answered questions about PTSD symptoms that they experienced as a result of witnessing their children's asthma attacks and the methods of coping that they utilized in managing the stressful aspects of their children's illness.
Simultaneous regression analyses demonstrated that the number of traumatic event types experienced by children/adolescents, the severity of PTSD symptoms experienced by mothers, and mothers' use of disengagement methods of coping each accounted for unique variance in children's general health and asthma-specific functional impairments. Subsequently, mediation models were tested, and results found that the severity of mothers' PTSD symptoms and mothers' use of disengagement coping each mediated the relationship between child trauma history and child health-related functional impairments. In addition, two-stage mediation models were tested. Results supported the hypothesis that children's trauma histories influence the severity of mothers' PTSD symptoms. These, in turn, influence mothers' use of disengagement coping, which, in turn, influences the degree of children's functional impairments. Clinical implications of the study's findings and directions for future research are discussed.