The present study was aimed to investigate age and gender effects on coping with everyday stressors among children and adolescents with chronic illness and healthy controls. Patients (8 Á/13 years of age) with asthma (n0/47), atopic dermatitis (n 0/52), and cancer (n 0/57) were compared to healthy controls (n0/158) matched by age, gender, and grade. Self-report data on coping with academic and interpersonal stressors were collected. The primary results indicated that coping with everyday stressors was improved in children and adolescents with chronic illness compared to healthy controls. Thus, patients reported less passive avoidance on cross-situational coping and tended to show more situation-specific coping with social and school-related stressors than healthy controls. Additionally, among the clinical groups, patients with atopic dermatitis and cancer scored higher on positive selfinstructions than patients with asthma. Conclusively, the results suggest that coping with a chronic illness may lead to more effective coping with everyday stressors. Implications for evaluating coping styles in patients with chronic illness are discussed.
Background: Besides having to cope with general developmental demands, children and adolescents suffering from atopic dermatitis (AD) have to face further daily and disease-related stressors. Therefore, an efficient stress and disease management is essential in order to avoid adverse effects on this chronic condition. Methods: In the present study, a patient education program implemented in inpatient rehabilitation was evaluated. A main component of this program was a cognitive-behavioral stress management training. Its efficacy was studied in comparison to a more knowledge-oriented education program without stress management. A total number of 60 patients aged 8–16 years participated in each treatment condition. 44 patients were included in the half-year catamnesis. Results: Immediately after rehabilitation, both groups showed a significant reduction in disease severity regarding the SCORAD index. Assessments at half-year follow-up indicated that the patient education program with stress management led to improvements in subjective health status and ability of coping with common stressors. In contrast, the control treatment tended to impair stress management in the long term. Conclusions: The results suggest that the multimodal patient education training for children and adolescents suffering from AD has beneficial effects on stress and disease management. The results are discussed with regard to an amelioration in quality of life.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.