Introduction: Every person's mental health determines his emotional status. Level of happiness and unhappiness indicates how satisfactory one's emotional status is. Physical and emotional illnesses affect happiness, especially chronic illness with several disabilities have more affect. Among them is thalasemia with its highest incidence in children and adolescent which affects 100,000 newborn in Asia each year.
Aim: Therefore Survey of emotional status in children and adolescent with thalasemia is necessary to promote their condition and prevent depression and anxiety.
Methods and materials: A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed which was carried out on 120 children and adolescent with thalasemia in selected hospitals in Rasht. The data collection tool was a questionnaire included demographics and Oxford & Foradais Happiness scale (contains 29 questions about emotional status). Children and adolescent completed this questionnaire. Data were analyzed by appropriate statistical tests using spss.
Results: Findings showed that the mean scores of happiness in children and adolescent was 15/5±2/93 which indicates that most children with thalesemia were not happy. There was a significant relationship between sex and happiness (p<0/04) and boys (80.3%) were more unhappy. There was no significant relationship between happiness and other demographic characteristics.
Conclusion: Since majority of children and adolescent with thalasemia were unhappy, attention to programs justified with the level of their physical and emotional health are necessary.
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