Adherence to asthma medication: The role of illness representations

The current study explores whether cognitive and emotional representations of asthma are associated with adherence to inhaled preventative asthma medication, as predicted by the Self-Regulatory Model (SRM). Three hundred and thirty individuals with asthma completed a questionnaire that assessed their cognitive and emotional representations of asthma and their adherence to prescribed medication. Multiple regression analyses revealed that including components of the SRM significantly improved the prediction of current adherence and intention to adhere in the future. Age, duration of asthma, gender, and components of the SRM were able to predict 28.7% of the variance in current adherence and 16.6% of the variance in intention to adhere. Current adherence was predicted by age, gender, certainty about asthma status, beliefs about antecedent causes, and beliefs about cure-control. Age, beliefs about cure-control, and beliefs about the duration of one's asthma significantly predicted intention to adhere in the future. It is concluded that future research is needed to test the SRM systematically and to explore the added value of incorporating emotional representations alongside cognitive representations. Such research may benefit from utilising innovative means of assessing emotional representations and should include beliefs about treatment. In addition, the possibility that representations of illness may not influence health behaviours linearly or uniformly across individuals should be considered.