Abstract
D.Litt.et Phil. (Psychology)
According to Cunningham (1978) there is a fair amount of
controversy that surrounds the possible causes of auto-immune
diseases. According to him there are two conflicting
categories of causes of which psycho-social causes is one and
abnormalities of the immune system is the other. Although a
substantial amount of studies concerning the relationship
between psychological factors and immune functioning have been
done, the results have been inconclusive. The reason for this
seems to be that there is a vast amount of mediating factors.
A further aspect that needs to be taken into account is that
psychoneuroimmunological research has focused mainly on
adults. Schleifer, Scott, Stein and Keller (1986) is of the
opinion that extensive research is required to study the
effects of the central nervous system and behaviour during the
early development of a person.
The study attempted to identify possible psycho-social factors
that could contribute to pediatric diseases such as rheumatoid
arthritis. In order to identify factors that are unique to
auto-immune diseases four groups were compared i.e, emotional
disorders, behavioral disorders, auto-immune diseases and a
"normal" group.