Happily
Married Diabetics Have Better Control
Healthcare
workers should pay attention to the social and relationship context of
their patients.
Diabetic
individuals who have happy marriages are more likely to be satisfied
with their diabetes-related quality of life than their unhappily
married peers, new study findings suggest. They are also less likely
to experience emotional distress because of their diabetes,
researchers report.
"Being
in a satisfying and intimate marital relationship predicts that you
will experience a better quality of life and especially a better
adaptation to the diabetes, said " Dr. Paula M. Trief of the
State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.
Trief
and her colleagues surveyed 78 adults with diabetes who had been
married for an average of 21 years. Follow-up interviews were
performed approximately 2 years after the initial survey.
Overall,
the patients' initial reports about their marital adjustment and
intimacy, respectively, predicted both their levels of
diabetes-related emotional distress and their satisfaction with their
diabetes-related quality of life at follow-up, the investigators
report in the July issue of Diabetes Care.
For
example, patients who initially reported high levels of intimacy in
their marriage were more likely to report increased satisfaction with
their diabetes regimen 2 years later, even after the researchers took
into account their education level and diabetes-related quality of
life.
Similarly,
patients who initially reported better marital adjustment also
reported greater satisfaction with their diabetes regimen at
follow-up.
"When
people are in a good marriage, their partner is more likely to support
their efforts to take care of their diabetes," Trief said.
"It may also be that people who know how to work at establishing
and maintaining a good marriage are the people who know how to work
hard at managing and coping with diabetes."
"It
may mean that marital domains are especially relevant to issues
specific to the disease of diabetes," Trief and her team
speculate. "However, it may be that overall health-related
quality of life is more stable than diabetes-specific quality of
life."
In
view of the findings, "healthcare workers should pay attention to
the social and relationship context of their patients," Trief
said. "And, if relationship problems exist, (they should)
recognize that this may translate into a poorer adaptation to the
diabetes and might require a referral for professional marital
counseling," she suggested.
"Both
the marriage and the diabetes affect each other and need
attention," she added. "As diabetes is a demanding disease,
the person with diabetes needs all the help they can get in managing
it." SOURCE:
Diabetes Care 2002;25:1154-1158.
Did
you know?
Researchers
led by Dr. Frank B. Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health in
Boston, Massachusetts found that women who later developed type 2
diabetes had a risk of heart attack almost 4 times higher than women
who never developed diabetes. Once women were diagnosed with diabetes,
the risk increased to 4.5 times that of non-diabetics. SOURCE:
Diabetes Care 2002;25:1129-1134, 1142-1148.
