Predicting children's asthma symptom onset: expressed emotion, medication, parent contact, and life events

An index of expressed emotion (EE) has been found to successfully predict relapse in several psychiatric and non psychiatric populations. However, the predictive value of the index is moderated by medication compliance, amount of contact with relatives, and independent life events. Higher levels of EE have been found for parents of asthmatic versus non asthmatic children. EE, time spent with children, life events, and children's medication compliance was obtained from 32 pairs of parents with an asthmatic child ages 5 to 12 in order to predict the number of children's asthma-related medical contacts in the preceding year. Regression analysis showed that two variables, the amount of time mothers' reported spending with their children and parents' estimates of their children's medication compliance were inversely related to the number of times children had an asthma-related medical contact. Also, higher levels of fathers' EE and Criticism were associated with higher school absenteeism. Implications of the findings as they relate to managing children's asthma are discussed.