Psychosocial symptoms and competence among adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease and their peers

✍ Scribed by Teija Väistö; Eeva T. Aronen; Petteri Simola; Merja Ashorn; Kaija-Leena Kolho

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 180 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1078-0998
• DOI: 10.1002/ibd.21002

✦ Synopsis

Background:

The aim was to evaluate psychosocial symptoms and competence as reported by the parents and the adolescents themselves among patients with inflammatory bowel disease (ibd) in relation to population-based controls.

Methods:

Standardized achenbach questionnaires-child behavior checklist (cbcl) for the parents and youth self-report (ysr) for the adolescents-were sent to finnish families of adolescents with ibd (age 10-18 years), and their controls matched for age, gender, and place of residence. the final study group comprised 160 adolescents with ibd and 236 controls with their parents, respectively.

Results:

According to parent reports, adolescents with ibd had more symptoms of anxious/depressed mood (p < 0.001), withdrawn/depressed mood (p < 0.05), social problems (p < 0.05), thought problems (p < 0.001), somatic complaints (p < 0.001), and lower competence (p < 0.05) than population-based controls. unexpectedly, there was no group difference in the amount of self-reported psychosocial symptoms, somatic complaints, or competence between adolescents with ibd and their peers. however, adolescents with severe ibd reported significantly more emotional problems (p < 0.001) than those with mild symptoms or controls.

Conclusions:

According to parents, adolescents with ibd have more emotional problems, social problems, thought problems, and lower competence than their population-based peers. self-perceived severity of the ibd symptoms is associated with a larger amount of parent and self-reported emotional symptoms. complementary methods should be used while assessing the psychosocial well-being of adolescents with ibd as questionnaires alone may be insufficient.