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

Allergic rhinitis, as a global health problem, accounts for several psychological disorders, including fatigue, mood changes, depression, anxiety, and disrupted Quality of Life. How people cope with the symptoms of this disease is essential. The present research is pioneering in comparing the QoL, psychological state, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies of patients with allergic rhinitis and healthy individuals.

Aligned with the purpose of the study, 132 patients and 132 healthy subjects were assigned to two groups. Both groups responded to the QoL symptom checklist (SCL90) and a short form of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ). One-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was run to make between-group comparisons.

The findings revealed that allergic patients had a lower QoL. Similarly, the two groups showed statistically significant differences in physical health, environmental life, and overall QoL. Clinical symptoms prevailed more in the allergic group compared to the healthy. Also, these two groups differed significantly regarding somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, and anxiety sub-scales. The healthy group used more adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (for instance, acceptance and positive reevaluation) than the allergic group. In addition, statistically significant divergences were found in the catastrophizing strategy, which prevailed more in the allergic group. 

Given the present findings, patients with allergic rhinitis have lower psychological health and QoL compared to the healthy population. These unfavorable conditions can result from inefficient use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies that mutually link allergic and clinical symptoms to the patients’ QoL.