Chronic Stomach Pain in Children Could Create Anxiety Disorders in Adulthood

If you're stomach's hurting all the time, it might make you upset or irritable. That makes sense, right? In fact, some believe music legend and icon Kurt Cobain suffered from stomach issues that were so painful, it could have been one of the reasons he allegedly committed suicide.

Thankfully, we're not talking about suicidal thoughts with this study. However, a recent research does suggest that kids suffering from chronic stomach pain could be more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders by the age of 20 than those who were not experiencing similar symptoms.  

In fact, previous studies suggest that between eight and 25 percent of all youth suffer from chronic stomach pain, with symptoms relating to anything from inflammatory bowel disease to celiac's disease.

Researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn. looked at 332 children who had visited the doctor due to unexplained stomach pain between the ages of eight and 17.

One hundred and forty-seven youth were also tracked from area schools due to reoccurring stomach issues.

When the participants turned 20, researchers interviewed them in person on or over the phone regarding their symptoms of depression and anxiety. Results showed that as many as four in 10 had a history of stomach problems from a possible gastrointestinal disorder. Fifty-one percent of the people with stomach pain as a child had never had any anxiety issues while 30 percent had.

Yet results also show that nearly 20 percent of the no-stomach pain group had an anxiety disorder and 12 percent currently had one, with anxiety more common in those who tended to have reoccurring issues.

Findings suggest that anxiety triggered from possible stomach aches need to be treated in a way that considers both the physical and emotional aspects.

"It's not just that they are anxious because of the pain. We saw that once the abdominal pain went away, they still had clinically significant anxiety," said study researcher Lynn Walker, professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn, via Live Science. "We need to address the pain and anxiety together, and help kids cope better with their discomfort."

She concludes with the following, via the news organization: "We think that chronic pain is better treated in a multidisciplinary fashion, in which you not only have to look for a disease, but you also look at emotional and psychological aspects of it, and address all of those together in an integrated fashion."

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found in the journal Pediatrics.