Pediatric Diabetes: A Growing Reality
Diabetes mellitus is a condition characterized by high blood glucose levels.
In diabetes mellitus, the body does not produce or effectively use ‘insulin’, a hormone that contributes to the necessary removal of excess glucose from the body. In recent years, the percentage of children suffering from diabetes has increased. Apart from genetic predisposition, the main factors responsible for the onset of the disease are poor nutrition and lack of exercise.
Children with Diabetes: The Challenges of Childhood
The onset of diabetes in childhood requires a general change in the child’s lifestyle, a fact that affects their psychology. Pediatric diabetes is a condition that ‘exists’ in the body but is not ‘visible’. This means that it is a chronic illness that manifests its presence through physical symptoms such as thirst, weight loss, and a feeling of lethargy. For the child, the fact that they suffer from something they cannot see but must control and manage is difficult to understand and accept. Furthermore, the process of receiving insulin through injection constitutes a stressful process for the child.
Emotional Challenges: How Diabetes Affects Children
Alongside the difficulty of understanding all the new information concerning their health and accepting daily injectable insulin administration, the child experiences feelings of anger, sadness, confusion, and uncertainty. These feelings may be replaced by more general difficulties in adapting to and adhering to the treatment plan, mood disorders, phobias, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. These reactions, on the part of the child, may arise as a result of their effort to manage their health condition but are also reinforced by various events/situations concerning the child’s immediate environment.
Parents and Diabetes: The Importance of Support
The process of accepting and managing diabetes psychologically affects both the child and the family. The approach, on the part of the parents, plays a significant role in this process. Alongside managing their own emotions, in relation to the health problem their child is experiencing, they should support the child on various issues concerning the health problem. It will therefore be useful to: communicate with the child about any issues that arise, set boundaries (if these have not been set), avoid overprotective behavior, while being careful not to give the child the impression that ‘nothing has changed’.
The Importance of Psychological Support for Children with Diabetes
The help that a mental health professional (psychologist) can offer in the acceptance and management of diabetes is invaluable. The psychologist, having the appropriate training, can:
- offer psychological support, in relation to the experience of the illness, to both the child and the family,
- evaluate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to timely identify the possible onset of psychopathology in the child (e.g., depression),
- assist in better managing the illness in relation to issues of adherence to the treatment plan and discipline regarding the special dietary program by the child
- encourage more constructive communication within the family
- help manage stress related to the experience of the illness.
Tatiana Xenou
Health Psychologist, MSc
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