[Quality of life for adolescents with vocal cord dysfunction]

Vocal cord dysfunction (VCD) is a functional breathing disorder. A psychosomatic aetiology has been discussed and associations with depression, anxiety disorders, and social stress have been reported. We have undertaken a screening of behavioural and emotional problems in adolescent patients using standardised questionnaires.

Thirty-one patients (8 - 16 years) with the clinical suspicion of VCD were investigated using the Youth-Self-Report (YSR/11 - 18) and for the assessment of the parents we used the analoguous Child-Behaviour-Checklist (CBCL/6 - 18). YSR and CBCL contain two sub-areas: (a) competence scales that measure the child's participation in activities, social skills and school achievements and (b) items that contain subscales for emotional problems such as depressive and anxiety symptoms, conduct problems such as oppositional defiant problems and aggressive behaviour, social problems and physical complaints.

On average, the features of VCD patients were not significantly different from those of the reference population. But we did observe tendencies of psychological problems (YSR 16.7 %, CBCL 20 %) compared with the standard (2 %) in the syndrome scales of both questionnaires Adolescents reported particularly more internalising disorders such as social retreat, physical complaint and anxiety and depressive symptoms. The parents reported more often "physical complaints" (13.3 %) and "aggressive behaviour" (10 %).

We found tendencies of psychological strain, mainly social retreat, physical complaints and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Further investigations should focus on those emotional problems as well as on psychosomatically caused physical problems. Personality and psychological stress of the parents should be included in the investigation in order to evaluate the reports of the parents on higher aggressive behaviour and enhanced physical problems of their children in relation to their own psychological strain. We suggest family therapies, family counselling, or parental coaching as a therapeutic approach.