Psychosocial Profile in Portuguese Adolescents with Chronic Disease Attending an Outpatient Department in a Hospital Setting

Abstract

Living with a chronic disease (CD) in adolescence involves new multifaceted challenges. This study aims to conduct a psychosocial characterization of a group of adolescents with chronic diseases in a hospital setting and to compare such dimensions for the total group and for different diseases. A cross-sectional study included 135 adolescents with chronic diseases (51.9% boys; 48.1% girls), having an average age of 14±1.5 years (SD=1.5) and attending a paediatric outpatient department in a hospital setting. Statistically significant differences were found among the different chronic diseases for the variables self-regulation (adolescents with diabetes had significantly higher competencies) and multiple psychosomatic symptoms (adolescents with neurologic diseases reported significantly more complaints). Boys presented both better health-related quality of life and psychosomatic health when compared to girls. No statistically significant differences were observed for health-related quality of life, psychosomatic health, resilience, and social support. These findings bring important suggestions especially while planning interventions, which must take into account the promotion of a healthy psychosocial development, through an inclusive perspective (covering different chronic diseases), that take into consideration specific and gendered approaches. Such suggestions might help healthcare professionals to better plan interventions in order to increase their effectiveness.

<p>Quality of Life and Emotional States of Depression, Anxiety and Stress in Adolescents with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: A Cross-Sectional Study</p>

“…39 Chronic disorders in adolescence can disrupt the quality of life aspects, which involves them with different concerns and challenges. 40 The health-related quality of life is affected by psychological and physical health factors. 20 It seems that the quality of life of adolescents with PCOS in our study was influenced by various psychological and physical health factors.…”

“…, and extremely severe:[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. The total score of DASS was calculated by summing up the items of each domain.…”

Chronic Conditions, School Participation and Quality of Life of Portuguese Adolescents: Highlights from the Health Behavior in School aged Children study - HBSC 2018

“…Adolescence has several biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes associated (Dahl et al, 2018;Rapee et al, 2019;Santrock, 2014) and is a stage in which some of the challenges inherent to the human development acquire an even more significant importance (Simões et al, 2010). The difficulty of this challenges can increase substantially when a chronic condition (CC) is present (Forgeron et al, 2018;Santos et al, 2016bSantos et al, , 2018Simões et al, 2010). These health conditions require adaptation to their specificities and limitations and increase the adolescents' vulnerability regarding mental health problems (Butler et al, 2018;Conversano, 2019;Gaspar et al, 2016;Huff et al, 2010;Moreira et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2016b;Valero-Moreno et al, 2019) Chronic condition is a very heterogeneous concept, since there are different types of health conditions and needs within this spectrum (Muntaner et al, 2014).…”

Psychosocial Problems of Children with Chronic Diseases: A Review Focusing on Pediatric Social Work Interventions

“…değişikliklerin yaşandığı çocukluk döneminde kronik bir hastalıkla yaşamak, değişen rutinleri öğrenmek, tedavinin gerektirdiği yaşam tarzını benimsemek, semptomları izlemek gibi süreçler çeşitli zorlukları da beraberinde getirir. Çocuk için birden fazla alandaki bu düzenlemeyi takip etmek zorlu bir deneyimdir (8). Bununla birlikte kronik hastalık, çocuğun etkileşim içinde olduğu aile, iş, okul ve toplum gibi pek çok sistemi etkileyebilir.…”

“…Kronik hastalığın yol açtığı çeşitli sınırlamalar ve duygusal semptomlar, çocuklarda sağlıklı bir psikolojik gelişim için risk oluşturabilir. Bu durum daha fazla uyum zorluğuna ve yaşam kalitesinin düşmesine yol açabilir (8,24). Bu etkenlerin yanında hastaneye sık yatma ya da hastanede kalma süresinin uzaması, aile desteğinin yeterince alınamaması gibi durumlar çocukta strese neden olabilir.…”