Psychic factors and the inception of asthma

Abstract

One hundred adult asthmatics and one hundred non-asthmatic subjects answered a questionnaire and underwent psychological investigations. Sixty-two per cent of the asthmatics and 30% of the controls had near relatives with atopic disorders, but psychic factors, especially those referring to the dichotomy introversion/extraversion, also had a explanatory power for the group code asthmatic/control. This was conspicuous for ‘the number of hobbies when of school age’ in particular, in which the asthmatics with a negative family history of atopic disorders obtained especially low values not connected with the onset of asthma in childhood. The controls with a positive family history of atopic disorders obtained the highest values, which might suggest that psychic properties connected with marked extraverted tendencies and behavioural activities may have a certain preventive effect against the inception of asthma, lessening the possibility of a manifestation of the disease in ‘potential asthmatics’. Inhibition, disturbances in self-esteem, problems in handling anxiety, fears (particularly in the women) and depression were typical of the asthmatics, whereas the male controls showed emotionally, energeticness and dominance more frequently than did the asthmatic men. The patients with a negative family history of atopic disorders in particular showed schizothymia and had difficulties in the expression of depressive feelings, although the investigation uncovered a high degree of depression in them.