According to a new study, children who suffer from asthma have a higher risk of being affected by depression and anxiety. The study also said that children with all these conditions were twice as likely to seek emergency room care when compared to patients with only the respiratory conditions.
The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. For the study, the researchers studied more than 65,00 children and youth with asthma between the age of 6 to 21. They also found that 7.7% of the participants with both depression and anxiety had a rate of 28 ER visits per 100 child years, controlling for age, gender, insurance type and other chronic illnesses.
“Asthma self-management is complex, requiring recognition of symptoms, adherence to medication and avoidance of triggers,” said first author Naomi Bardach, MD, MAS, of the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Pediatrics and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies.
“The symptoms of anxiety and depression can make it more challenging to follow treatment, leading to more ER visits,” she added.
The authors noted that anxiety and depression are more common in children with asthma.
In some children with asthma, depression and anxiety, it can be difficult to tease out which symptom is attributed to which condition, said senior author Michael Cabana, MD, MPH, formerly of UCSF and currently with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.
The research results confirm studies in adults with asthma who also had depression and anxiety. This group of patients was also found to have a higher likelihood of visits to the ER, urgent care clinics and unscheduled visits with their providers, compared to adults with asthma alone.
