Giannakopoulos G, Chouliaras G, Margoni D, Korlou S, Hantzara V, Panayotou I, Roma E, Liakopoulou M, Anagnostopoulos DC. Stressful life events and psychosocial correlates of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease activity. World J Psychiatr 2016; 6(3): 322-328 [PMID: 27679771 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v6.i3.322]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. George Giannakopoulos, Department of Child Psychiatry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, Aghia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Thivon and Papadiamantopoulou, 11527 Athens, Greece. giannakopoulos.med@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
Case Control Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatr. Sep 22, 2016; 6(3): 322-328 Published online Sep 22, 2016. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v6.i3.322
Stressful life events and psychosocial correlates of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease activity
George Giannakopoulos, George Chouliaras, Daphne Margoni, Sophia Korlou, Vassiliki Hantzara, Ioanna Panayotou, Eleftheria Roma, Magda Liakopoulou, Dimitris C Anagnostopoulos
George Giannakopoulos, Sophia Korlou, Vassiliki Hantzara, Magda Liakopoulou, Dimitris C Anagnostopoulos, Department of Child Psychiatry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, Aghia Sophia Children’s Hospital, 11527 Athens, Greece
George Chouliaras, Daphne Margoni, Ioanna Panayotou, Eleftheria Roma, 1st Department of Pediatrics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, Aghia Sophia Children’s Hospital, 11527 Athens, Greece
Author contributions: Giannakopoulos G was involved in interpretation of data and writing the manuscript; Chouliaras G analysed data; Margoni D, Korlou S, Hantzara V and Panayotou I were involved in acquisition of data and clinical support; Roma E, Liakopoulou M and Anagnostopoulos DC were involved in study concept and design, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, and study supervision.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Aghia Sophia Children’s Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None declared.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. George Giannakopoulos, Department of Child Psychiatry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, Aghia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Thivon and Papadiamantopoulou, 11527 Athens, Greece. giannakopoulos.med@gmail.com
Telephone: +30-21-32013258 Fax: +30-21-32013669
Received: February 9, 2016 Peer-review started: February 12, 2016 First decision: April 15, 2016 Revised: April 25, 2016 Accepted: June 14, 2016 Article in press: June 16, 2016 Published online: September 22, 2016 Processing time: 222 Days and 18.5 Hours
Abstract
AIM
To investigate the association of psychiatric and psychosocial correlates with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) activity in children and adolescents.
METHODS
A total of 85 pediatric IBD patients (in remission or active state of the disease) and their parents completed a series of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews measuring life events, depression, anxiety, family dysfunction, and parent mental health. Differences between the remission and the IBD active group and the association of any significant variable with the disease activity state were examined.
RESULTS
Parents of children being in active state of the disease reported more life events (P = 0.005) and stressful life events (P = 0.048) during the past year and more mental health symptoms (P < 0.001), while the children themselves reported higher levels of anxiety symptoms (P = 0.017) compared to the remission group. In the logistic regression multivariate analysis, the only predictor which had a significant positive effect on the probability of the patients being in active state was parent mental health symptoms (OR = 4.8; 95%CI: 1.2-25.8).
CONCLUSION
Life events, child anxiety and parent mental health symptoms may be important correlates of pediatric IBD activity and targets of thorough assessment and treatment.
Core tip: The present study examined the associations of several psychosocial factors and outcomes with pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) activity. Second, it shed some light on the relationship of the disease activity (i.e., IBD remission or active state) with preceding life events. Addressing simultaneously psychosocial needs of both children and parents in the course of pediatric IBD seem to be of importance in any effective preventive and therapeutic intervention. Moreover, the role of stressful events in the course of pediatric IBD although being mediated or moderated by individual factors seem to be a possible target for future research and psychosocial treatment modalities.
