Psychological correlates of bronchial asthma in young adults: The cognitive orientation approach

Yehudah Roth and Shulamith Kreitler*

A large body of studies showed emotional, psychopathological and personality correlates of asthma but failed to identify a specific psychological type and specific sources of stress for asthma. The purpose was to identify psychological correlates specific to asthma that would unravel characteristic sources of stress. The study was done in the framework of the cognitive orientation theory which assumes that cognitive contents and processes affect physiological processes. The subjects were 34 asthma patients (7 yrs mean duration) and 43 matched controls (mean age 22-23 yrs). All subjects were administered a questionnaire assessing beliefs of 4 types (goals, norms, self and general) referring to 19 themes identified in pretests as relevant. The results showed that there is a set of beliefs characterizing asthma patients in terms of all belief types and themes (e.g., obsessive-compulsive, ambition, perfection) that enabled identifying asthma patients significantly by means of a stepwise discriminant analysis. The findings show that there is a characteristic asthma type and specific sources of stress dependent on stress-generating themes (e.g., not expressing anger, fear of rejection) and conflicts (i.e., striving for closeness to others vs withdrawal from others, behaving in conformity with commitments vs rejecting all in favor of personal freedom, and a discrepancy between view of self and of others).

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Published on: Jun 15, 2020 Pages: 1-10

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/oja.000011
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