Personality traits and illness representations as predictors of life satisfaction in hypertensive adolescents and emerging adults

Abstract

This exploratory study examined the role of illness representations and personality in hypertensive adolescents' and emerging adults' life satisfaction. Even though earlier research showed that illness representations and personality traits predict life satisfaction in paediatric samples suffering from other chronic illnesses, these associations were not yet explored on youth with essential hypertension. The 97 participants were assessed for demographic and medical data, life satisfaction, illness representations (own illness representations - OIR, and perceived important others' representations about participants' illness - PIOIR), and personality (self-report and peer-report). Regression analyses indicated that OIR and self-reported personality traits accounted for 24% of the variance in general life satisfaction, 33% of variance in family-related life satisfaction, 25% of variance in friends-related life satisfaction, and 25% of variance in self-related life satisfaction. When entering PIOR illness representations and peerassessed personalit y t raits as predictors of life satisfaction domains, these predictors accounted for 29% of the var iance in general life satisfaction, 23% of variance in family-related life satisfaction, 17% of variance in friends-related life satisfaction, 24% of the variance in the living environment-related life satisfaction, and 20% in self-related life satisfaction. More specifically, the personality traits of agreeableness (self-report), neuroticism (self-report) and openness (peer report), as well as the illness representations dimensions (OIR: concern and emotional burden; PIOIR: identity, comprehension, consequences and treatment control of PIOIR), were shown to be the most important predictors of different domains of life satisfaction.