Child-reported depressive symptoms are more strongly associated with asthma than are clinician- or parent-reported symptoms, reported Dr. James Waxmonsky and his colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Dr. Waxmonsky and his colleagues found that clinically significant depressive symptoms were reported in more than one-quarter of the children (26%) in the study, which looked at 129 asthmatic inner city children aged 7–17 years.
The researchers evaluated the prevalence of depression and the best ways to measure symptoms in inner city children with asthma, because this population is understudied and may be predisposed to physical and emotional illnesses (J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 2006;45:945–54).
Each child's depression was assessed using several measures, including the Child Depression Inventory, Children's Depression Rating Scale-Revised, and Child Behavior Checklist-Internalizing Scale.
The depression rating scales were significantly correlated with one another, but self-report measures, such as the CDI, may be the most effective at assessing the link between depression and asthma “because they may best capture depressive symptoms that compromise airway conductivity,” the researchers wrote.
Overall, 96 children (74%) had moderate to severe asthma, and the mean lung function, based on forced expiratory volume in 1 second, was 88.1 FEV1. Asthma was significantly associated with minority race.
Previous studies have shown associations between parental depression and children's asthma, but no significant association between those factors was found in this study–although 43% of mothers and 32% of fathers met the criteria for depression based on Beck's Depression Inventory.