Teaching Kids to Cope with IBD

Saw this article about a study conducted at the University of Georgia with teenage girls suffering from IBD. They found that teaching the young girls "coping" and "community" skills had a positive impact on their physical symptoms. They also found that mental distress decreased -- as they called it "catastrophic thoughts" (pretty scary sounding if you ask me).

Here's an excerpt:

"We saw significant improvements in these adolescents' physical symptoms and coping strategies following treatment," said Ronald Blount, professor of clinical psychology at UGA and an author of the study. "Parents, who were also involved in the study, reported reductions in catastrophic thoughts related to their daughters' pain and improved behavioral reactions related to their daughters' physical symptoms. We aimed to teach parents to become coaches for their daughters to help them better manage their symptoms."

Inflammatory bowel disease is a pretty life changing illness, though, and one quite difficult to talk about with others (particularly if you're a teenager), so I can certainly appreciate how important it is to teach young people these coping strategies. Stress certainly may play a contributing role in the disease, so stress reduction strategies may be helpful. The next step for the researchers is to expand the study to a larger population.