Quality of Life, Psychological State and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Allergic Rhinitis Patients vs. Healthy Population: A Comparative Study

Objective: As a global health problem, allergic rhinitis accounts for several psychological disorders including fatigue, mood changes, depression, anxiety, and disrupted quality of life. How people cope with the symptoms of the disease is of an utmost importance.  The present research is pioneering in comparing the quality of life, psychological state and cognitive emotion regulation strategies between patients with allergic rhinitis and healthy counterparts. Method: Aligned with the purpose of study, 132 patients and 132 healthy subjects were, respectively, assigned to groups. Both responded to the quality of life, symptom checklist (SCL90), and short form of the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ). One-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was run to make between-group comparisons. Result: The present findings revealed that allergic patients had a lower quality of life. Similarly, the two groups showed statistically significant differences in physical health, environmental life, and overall quality of life. Clinical symptoms prevailed more in the allergic group than the healthy. The two groups also differed significantly in terms of somatization, interpersonal sensitivity and, anxiety sub-scales. The healthy group used more adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., acceptance and positive reevaluation) than the allergic group. Statistically significant divergences were also found in the catastrophizing strategy, which showed to prevail more in the allergic group. Conclusion: In the light of the present findings it can be concluded that patients with allergic rhinitis have a lower psychological health and quality of life than the healthy population. These unfavorable conditions can be due to the inefficient use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies which mutually link allergic and clinical symptoms to patients’ quality of life.