Comparison of anxiety, depression, brain behavioral systems (BIS-BAS),coping styles, anger and hostility in people with and without asthma

Asthma is a chronic illness that can severely affect people's lives. The aim of this study was to compare anxiety, depression, brain Behavioural systems (BIS-BAS), coping styles, anger and hostility among people with and without asthma.

Fifty women with asthma attending Shahid Motahhari specialized clinic in Shiraz and 50 normal women were selected using purposive sampling method and were asked to fill these questionnaires: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), behavioural inhibition/activation system (Carver and White), coping styles (Lazarus and Folkman), and the Multidimensional Anger Inventory (Siegel). All participants ranged in age from 16 to 27 years. Data analysis was done by SPSS 11.5 and LISREL 8.54 using Multi-way analysis of variance test (MANOVA), and path analysis.

Data analysis showed that the two groups had significant differences in nxiety- depression,behavioural inhibition / activation system and BAS subscales (response to drives, fun seeking, reward responsiveness), coping style, anger-arousal, range of anger-eliciting situations, hostile outlook and angerin (all P<0.05).

The results of this study showed that in comparison with normal people without asthma,people with asthma show more anxiety, depression, BIS activity and less BAS activity. Also People with asthma use more emotion oriented coping styles and experience more anger-arousal, anger, range of anger-eliciting situations, hostile outlook and anger-in. Also by path analysis, carefull examination of the relationships between variables showed that coping style has a mediational role in personality traits and clinical symptoms in patients with asthma.