Relationship between psychosocial variables and school absenteeism in kindergarten children

Abstract

Experimental and clinical studies have demonstrated that psychosocial factors may influence various immune responses. Recently, the relationship between psychologically stressful events and immunomodulation in humans has been reported. Few studies, however, have demonstrated clinically significant increases in infectious illness, or delayed recovery from infectious illness among humans as a result of stressful events. This study was undertaken to determine if children who experienced the greatest difficulty adjusting to kindergarten entry, a common event which is differentially stressful, would have the highest frequency of school absence (an index of illness). A randomly selected sample of 49 children entering kindergarten for the first time, and their families (patients of a suburban pediatric practice), were studied over a 6-month period utilizing health diaries, interviews with parents, parent ratings, physicians' records and ratings, and teacher ratings of children's behavior. We were unable to demonstrate a relationship between psychosocial factors and school absence among our sample of children. A possible explanation for this finding may be the relatively nondeviant character of the subjects studied. Another possibility is that kindergarten entry was not experienced as a stressful event for the children, most of whom had attended nursery school.