Psychiatric complications of pediatric asthma

Asthma is the most common chronic illness of childhood. An increased prevalence of psychopathology has been shown repeatedly to occur in severely asthmatic children, but little evidence exists to suggest that this is true for children with mild asthma. A major problem in interpreting the psychological literature addressing asthma has been the absence of studies of children with specified subtypes of the disease and the analysis of heterogeneous samples including children with a wide range of ages and poorly defined disease characteristics. Depression and anxiety disorders occur at a greater prevalence in severely asthmatic children and may be exacerbated by antiasthmatic medications. Vocal cord dysfunction may be misdiagnosed as asthma and is suggested to be associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disturbance. The presence of depressive illness in very severe asthmatic patients is associated with greater asthma mortality and requires intervention. Treatment considerations include the need for a high level of suspicion for noncompliance in patients who are nonresponsive to antiasthmatic medications, judicious use of antidepressant medication, referral of children with co-occurring psychiatric symptoms for psychiatric assessment and management, and consideration of early intervention strategies to minimize the initial expression of asthmatic symptoms.