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Juvenile rheumatic diseases are serious chronic illnesses potentially capable of disrupting a child's development and functioning. This study examined the psychosocial functioning of 43 children with severe rheumatic disease as compared to that of 52 children with a milder or inactive form of rheumatic disease. Both patient groups also were compared to 93 healthy children from demographically matched families. Data were obtained from parent reports, from physician evaluation, and, for children who were old enough, from self-reports. The severe patient group showed more parent-reported psychological and physical problems than both the mild patient group and the healthy controls. Compared to the mild group, the severe group also missed more days of school due to illness. Older children in the severe group were more likely to miss school due to illness and to participate in fewer social activities with their families and friends than the controls; however, the older children reported comparable mood and functioning in other areas. An expanded model is proposed to examine risk and resistance factors predictive of psychological and social dysfunction among children with severe chronic disease.

While studies have been conducted to determine the social-emotional development and learning outcomes associated with participation in sport clubs, very few similar studies have been done on the recreational sports environment as a whole. It is important to know why college recreation centers are important to student life as well as to understand what overall benefits students receive from the program as a whole. This study revealed that students who used the student recreation center more frequently were more likely to be attend the university, experience place bonding, social belonging to the recreation center and the university, integration into the university and hence retention at the university. From a practical perspective, the findings provide information for the university to better understand how to attract and retain students throughout their academic careers by the presence of a student recreation center.

Psychosocial risk and resistance factors within the domains of parental functioning, family stressors, and family resources were examined as predictors of psychological adjustment and physical problems in juvenile rheumatic disease patients (N = 93), their healthy siblings (N = 72), and demographically matched healthy controls (N = 93). Family socioeconomic status and background variables showed few consistent relationships with child functioning. However, a constellation of risk and resistance factors tended to show comparable associations with functioning for patients, siblings, and controls. Higher parental depression and medical symptoms and more family stressors, sibling problems, and burden of illness on the family predicted more problems among the patients. These relationships held when disease duration and severity were controlled. For the siblings, increased parental and patient dysfunction, more family stressors, and less family cohesion and expressiveness were associated with more problems. Although the associations were not as strong, mothers' depression and lack of family cohesion and expressiveness also were related to more adjustment problems among the control children. These findings imply that there may be a general association between certain risk and resistance factors and childhood adaptation.

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