Background: To date, there is no model of psychosocial development based on empirical food allergy (FA) research. This limits the ability of clinicians, researchers and policy‐makers to predict and evaluate the real impact of FA on the child, with implications for prevention, treatment, intervention and health policy.
Objectives: To provide an integrated conceptual framework to explain the onset, development and maintenance of FA‐related cognitions, emotions and behaviour, with particular attention to transition points.
Method: Fifteen focus groups meetings were held with 62 children (6–15 years). Developmentally appropriate techniques were designed to stimulate discussion, maintain interest and minimize threat to children’s self‐esteem. Data were analysed using grounded theory.
Results: FA impacts directly on children’s normal trajectory of psychological development in both an age‐ and disease‐specific manner. Six key themes emerged from the analysis: ‘meanings of food’; ‘autonomy, control and self‐efficacy’; ‘peer relationships’; ‘risk and safety’; ‘self/identity’; and ‘coping strategies’.
Conclusions: Coping with FA is more than simply a strategy, it is a cumulative history of interactive processes (age, gender and disease specific) that are embedded in a child’s developmental organization.
Clinical Implications: The early recognition and incorporation of an FA‐specific developmental framework into a treatment plan is essential and sets the stage for an effective medical care and the eventual transition from paediatric to adult care.
Capsule Summary: This study represents a first attempt to provide an integrated developmental framework to explain the onset, development and maintenance of FA‐related cognitions, emotions and behaviour.
As part of a wider research project aimed at investigating how children think about several aspects of pain, definitions of pain used by 680 Irish schoolchildren aged 5-14 years were examined to see if a developmental pattern could be identified in the acquisition of a verbally mediated concept of pain. The results are consonant with a Piagetian developmental model, suggesting the possibility of delineating typical concepts of pain which correspond to successive stages of cognitive development.
The ideas of 680 Irish schoolchildren aged 5-14 years about the causality of pain were studied as part of a wider investigation of children's understanding of pain. The results indicated an association between pain and 'transgression' consonant with the literature on children's beliefs about the causality of illness, but not reported in previous studies of children's ideas about pain. Developmental patterns were also noted in the data and one significant sex difference consistent with a previously reported trend.
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