Psychological aspects of diabetes management

• Autores: Mark Davies
• Localización: Medicine, ISSN-e 1357-3039, Vol. 43, Nº. 1, 2015, págs. 57-59
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Optimizing diabetes management represents a significant challenge to patients and understanding how best to help is a similarly complex task. Achieving optimal plasma glucose is difficult and many factors are associated with poor control. Understanding how diabetes weaves into the complexity of an individual's personality and their life is crucial. As well as coping with the lifestyle and intellectual challenges demanded by diagnosis, patients are also required to process the emotional consequences of being told the diagnosis and living with a chronic, progressive condition. Psychological ill-health is more common in people with diabetes than the general population and is associated with poorer biomedical outcomes; a psychological element to care is important, and evidence is emerging to support the effectiveness of a variety of formal psychological interventions. Ultimately, people with diabetes themselves make the final decisions about how they manage their condition and healthcare professionals can find their consequent sense of disempowerment to be unfamiliar and frustrating. Building mutually respectful collaborative relationships, which encompass an emotional dimension, should be a central goal of all those involved in diabetes care.