[Body complaints and neuroticism in pediatric patients with rheumatism]

Pain and aches are part of subjective experience. Caring for chronically ill children and adolescents not only objective results but also the children s subjective perception of their illness should be taken into consideration. We have tried to record the extent of subjective suffering of a group of pediatric rheumatic patients and to correlate our findings with personality traits.

We interviewed thirty-one 8 to 18 years old children and adolescents (average age 12 years) by means of a standardized questionnaire (Giessener Beschwerdefragebogen) and of a standardized personality questionnaire (HANES,KJ). The tested group comprised of 9 boys and 22 girls. 14 patients suffered from a chronic oligoarthritis, 9 from a chronic polyarthritis, 8 from a other rheumatic disease. Percentiles of more than 89 percent have been considered significant compared to norm collectives.

28% of the patients showed augmented values on the scales "exhaustion" and "intestinal pain", 25% on the scale "pain in joints". Only 3 respectively 2 patients showed augmented values on the scales "heart" and "symptoms of cold". 28% showed augmented values on the overall scale "feeling of discomfort". 35% showed augmented values on neuroticism, 61% values > 89. percentile on the scale "extraversion". There is a significant connection between augmented strong feelings of discomfort and augmented values of neuroticism on the level 0.1%. A context to the duration of the illness was not found.

Experience of physical pains is not only limited to isolated symptoms of the basic illness but also associated with general features of personality.