Attitudes of Children with Diabetes Toward Their Disease

Background: In order to enable children with type 1 diabetes to live in harmony with their disease, it is necessary to become better acquainted with the attitudes developed by such children toward their condition. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the attitudes of children with type 1 diabetes toward their disease, as well as to determine the factors that affect those attitudes. Patients and Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in the pediatric endocrinology polyclinics of two hospitals in eastern Turkey between September 2013 and June 2014. The study population consisted of 150 children with diabetes who were registered at the pediatric endocrinology polyclinics. Without using a sampling method, the study was conducted with 104 diabetic children. The children's introductory form and the child attitude toward illness scale were used to collect data for the study. To evaluate the data and determine the relevant percentages and means, an independent samples t-test, the Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used. Results: It was determined that 58.7% of the children were aged 13 - 18 years, 56.7% were female, and 45.2% had received education to the ninth to twelfth grade level. The conditions that affected the children's attitudes toward their disease were whether or not they had social security, their mothers' education level, their mothers' working conditions, their fathers' education level, and whether or not members of their immediate family also had diabetes (P < 0.05). Other factors affecting their attitudes were the frequency of having to measure their blood glucose, how much the disease affected their daily activities, and their level of knowledge about their disease (P < 0.05). Conclusions: This study revealed that children with type 1 diabetes had neutral attitudes (i.e., neither a positive nor a negative attitude) toward their disease, which were affected by certain variables.