Role of knowledge of Asthma and psychosocial factors in adherence and health outcomes of Asthma patients

Abstract

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is one of the greatest challenges in the contemporary society. newlineDespite the advances in science and technology, the chronic illness condition poses a serious newlinethreat to an individual s health. Asthma is one such chronic illness condition whose origin newlineis greatly influenced by psychological factors. It has been reported that poor asthma newlinemanagement is the primary factor for mortality rates and its incidence is invariably newlineincreasing. This study explores the relationship between knowledge of asthma, psychosocial newlinefactors, adherence, and health outcomes of asthma patients, assesses the role of knowledge newlineof asthma and psychosocial factors in adherence, and health outcomes of asthma patients newlineand also examines the patterns of variations of knowledge of asthma, psychosocial factors, newlineadherence, and health outcomes of asthma patients across geographical settings and age newlinecategories. A correlational design using survey method is used. The standardized measures newlineare administered on 285 participants. The descriptive statistics, Pearson s r, multiple newlineregression analysis (step-wise), and 2 × 3 two-way ANOVA are computed. Our analyses newlineshow significant negative relationship between knowledge of asthma, adherence, and health newlineoutcomes. Social support, knowledge of asthma interventions, knowledge of asthma newlinesymptoms, and self-efficacy significantly predict adherence. However, knowledge of newlineasthma, depression, anxiety, and stress significantly predict poor health outcomes. Further, newlineolder asthma patients from urban settings have adequate knowledge of asthma, lower newlinesymptoms and triggers, high self-efficacy, and received social support when compared to newlinerural asthma patients. Moreover, adherence is found to be high among rural early and middle newlineadults. We also observe that there is no significant relationship between knowledge of newlineasthma and adherence; but social support plays a significant role and predict greater newlineadherence. Further, we observe that depression, anxiety, and stress lead to poor health newlineou