Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The primary incidence of T1DM in children in Belarus is 19.27‰. It’s noteworthy, modern training programs of Schools of Diabetes include questions of the psychological state.

Objective: The study included 26 parents of children diagnosed with T1DM.

Methods: we used questionnaire to assess the attitude of parents to child’s disease, HADS and social adaptation self-evaluation scales (T. Holmes, R. Ray).

Results: High scores characterize anxious attitude of most parents (78%) to the child’s disease. 54% of parents showed external parental control of the disease when the causes of disease are seen as something out of the parents’ control. 27% of parents indicated hypernosognosia (exaggeration of the severity of disease), 13% – hyponosognosia. 15% of parents showed low indices for internal control, when parents perceive themselves as fully responsible for the child’s disease. In 3 cases (1.16%) parental anxiety that exceeded subclinical indicators was revealed, in 1 case – clinically expressed depression, which was most likely not associated with the child’s disease. Almost all of the studied (96%) had problems with controlling the physical activity of the child; 2% of parents, on the contrary, indicated high activity control indices characterizing the setting of maximum restrictions on the activity of the child. It should be noted that parents whose anxiety was below average (13.6%) tried to replace anxiety with something else: emotional lability, apathy, obsessions, etc., which further may negatively affect the psychological health of parents and their children.

Conclusion: When a problem raises in the family, the child and parents need the qualified help of a psychologist in order to cope with acute stress and begin to make joint decisions objectively.