Couples’ success and relationship with diabetes: Transforming, Accepting, or Rejecting

What is it about?

While the bulk of research on diabetes self-management has focused on the difficult challenges and the surprising failures of many programs to meaningfully increase compliance with recommended regimens of self-care, the current study investigates participants' experiences to find approaches that lead to success in the lives of couples dealing with diabetes. This orientation toward success elucidated rich descriptions of three main contributing themes: the couple's relationship with diabetes (Transforming, Accepting, Rejecting), their active partnering in the diabetes regimen (Partnering, Pushing, Uninvolved), and the self-responsibility taken by the person with diabetes (Self, Spouse, Physician, other). These three themes provide a meaningful picture of how couples create success in diabetes management.

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Why is it important?

The results imply useful clinical interventions. Further, this study suggests promising paths for future research on caring for other chronic conditions, including ways to address the critically rising rates of obesity, for couples and other close relationships. The authors performed an unpublished follow-up dissertation study that examined the three themes of the current qualitative study as quantitative factors using structural equation modeling. It found statistically significant support that they do indeed explain a great deal of couples' success in diabetes management.

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