Mother/Infant/Child | Articles
In children with arthritis, stress and mood are important predictors of disease symptoms, research shows, suggesting that non-drug interventions, such as stress management and cognitive behavioral therapy, may be useful in improving symptoms.
Childhood arthritis is characterized by unpredictable flares of disease symptoms such as pain, morning stiffness, fatigue, and sleep troubles. And while researchers have long suspected a link between psychosocial stress, mood, pain, and disease flares in childhood arthritis, these relationships have not been studied adequately.
Therefore, Dr. Laura E. Schanberg of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues looked for patterns of stress, mood, and disease symptoms and reduced activity in children with arthritis.
The children reported pain, stiffness, and fatigue on more than 70 percent of days, despite use of pain medication, the researchers report. Moreover, the researchers observed significant same-day relationships between stress, mood, and disease symptoms.
For example, daily fluctuations in both stress and mood predicted increased pain, stiffness, and fatigue. There was a significant association between increases in daily stress, mood and disease symptoms and decreased participation in social activities on a day-to-day basis. Only mood and stiffness predicted a cutback in school attendance.
Often stress is not considered to be a real issue with our children, and all to often it is just because we are not paying close attention to the issue. Not only does stress and mood issues effect arthritis, but is associated with attention problems, sleep patterns, eating habits, weight gain etc…,
In other words, they can suffer from every disease that we do. Make sure you share your stresses and how you handle them with your children so they learn from you and you are held accountable to improve these areas of your life too.
Dr. Benzinger
