Social support and coping in adults with type 2 diabetes

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Social support and coping in adults with type 2 diabetes
 
Creator Ramkisson, Samantha Pillay, Basil J. Sibanda, Wilbert
 
Subject Health Psychology Social support; coping; Type 2 diabetes
Description Background: The diagnosis of diabetes has been described as a lifelong psychological burden on the patient and his or her family. Social support plays a pivotal role in patients with diabetes and is important in enabling them to cope effectively with the disease. There is a dearth of research on social support and coping in patients with diabetes in South Africa.Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore whether patients with poor perceived social support have lower levels of well-being and coping than patients with good social support.Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted at both public and private facilities on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The Diabetes Care Profile (DCP), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ) and the WHO-5 Well-being Index (WHO-5) were administered to 401 participants.Results: The findings indicate that there is an inverse relationship between social support and coping, which suggests that an increase in social support is associated with a decrease in emotional distress. There was a small positive correlation between the SSQ and the WHO-5, which suggests participants who had good support endorsed better levels of well-being. Although participants indicated that they were satisfied with their level of support, they had poor coping as indicated by the high mean score on the GHQ and the high HbA1c level. There was a small positive correlation between GHQ and HbA1c. There was no association between social support and HbA1c.Conclusion: Social support is important in helping the patient with diabetes cope with the disease and to improve adherence to treatment. Health care providers should take cognisance of psychosocial factors in the treatment regime of the patient. Family members should be educated about diabetes, the importance of adherence and long-term complications of the disease.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor National Research Foundation, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Date 2017-07-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Cross sectional study
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v9i1.1405
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 9, No 1 (2017); 8 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1405/2172 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1405/2171 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1405/2173 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1405/2160
 
Coverage KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa June 2013- November 2013 males, females, black african, coloured, indian and white, private and public sector
Rights Copyright (c) 2017 Samantha Ramkisson, Basil J. Pillay, Wilbert Sibanda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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