Volume 25, Issue 113, July 2021

Quality of life in pediatric with asthma during the COVID-19 pandemic: Moderating role of coronavirus-related anxiety in children and mothers

Amin Sohrabzadeh Fard¹, Maryam Bakhtiari^2♦, Narges Eslami³, Abbas Masjedi Arani²

¹PhD Candidate, Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
²Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
³Assistant Professor, Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Mofid Children’s Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

^♦Corresponding author
Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) has affected the quality of life of children and parents. Furthermore, the mental health of children with asthma and their care givers may be affected by the anxious conditions of the coronavirus. In this study, the moderating role of coronavirus anxiety in the associations between psychiatric symptoms and quality of life (QL) in children with asthma was investigated. The present study is a cross-sectional study. The sample includes 118 children (53% boys) aged 7 to 14 years with asthma and their mothers (n =118). Also, 56% of the samples had mild asthma, 38% moderate, and 24% severe asthma. The results showed that after adjusting for the role of severity and control of asthma, child and mother psychiatric symptoms predicted 17% (ΔR²=.17) of the variance in QL in children. Coronavirus anxiety in children and mothers as moderating variable explained 15% of the variance QL in children with asthma. Overall, psychiatric symptoms and coronavirus anxiety in mothers and children predicted 27% of the poor QL in children with asthma. In this study, a high correlation was observed between maternal psychiatric symptoms and child psychiatric symptoms. Psychiatric symptoms and coronavirus anxiety in mothers and children play a significant role in the QL of children, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, paying more attention to these symptoms can help improve the QL of children with asthma. Also, investigating the long-term effects of these symptoms can be of interest to researchers.

Keywords: Quality of Life; COVID-19; Pediatric Asthma; Depression; Anxiety

Medical Science, 2021, 25(113), 1691-1698

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