Despite concerted efforts to understand and control childhood asthma, the current morbidity rate in the United States is approximately 3 per 100, 000, the highest documented morbidity rate in the world. Researchers have increasingly turned to psychological and social factors that might play a role in chronic asthma. Two major factors have been studied, stress and psychological adjustment. In general, stress has been found to be associated with more severe symptoms for a number of childhood diseases, including diabetes, epilepsy, and muscular dystrophy and, not surprisingly, stress has also been associated with more severe asthma symptoms. Research on psychological adjustment has been more mixed. Some studies have found that children with more severe asthma also show more adjustment problems, whereas other studies find no relation between asthma and psychological adjustment. But no one has provided an explanation of how children's stress and possible adjustment problems are related to the psychological and social environment in which they are living, or how stress and adjustment might be related to medical compliance and health outcome.

In The Emory Asthma Project, we are examining coping and adjustment for children living with chronic asthma. We assess the family environment, parents and children's stress levels and coping skills, children's psychological adjustment, medical compliance and health outcome through a variety of measures, including mothers and children's narratives about coping with asthma. We are finding that children learn to cope within their family environments, such that parents who display better coping skills and lower levels of stress will facilitate coping and well-being skills in their children. We are currently exploring relations

For More informantion, see our recent publications:

Sales, J.M. & Fivush, R. (2005). Social and emotional functions of mother-child reminiscing about emotional events. Social cognition, 23, 66-88.

Fivush, R., & Sales, J.M. (in press). Coping, attachment and mother-child narratives of stressful events. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly.