Psychological Adjustment of Children with Sickle Cell Anemia

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Abstract
The psychological adjustment of 30 children with sickle cell anemia (ages 6–16) was evaluated and compared to a groups of 30 healthy control subjects who attended a family medical clinic for routine health problems. As expected, the groups differed on several measures related to medical problems (e.g., number of clinic visits, medication intake, and length of illness). However, no group differences emerged regarding psychological problems. Behavioral problems were found for both groups when their scores were compared to the normative samples for various psychological measures. Thus, the children of both groups were found to have more behavioral problems than the normative samples. Since the groups were equivalent in terms of low socioeconomic status (SES), it was suggested that the hypothesized maladjustment of children with sickle cell anemia is more likely to be a result of the generally low SES of these black children rather than a result of the illness of sickle cell anemia.