Adjustment to Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and its Relation with Anxiety and Depression in Pediatric Patients

Around 26 and 43% of pediatric patients diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus presents psychological problems, being anxiety and depression the more frequent ones. An important factor regarding the wellbeing of these patients is the presence of good adjustment indicators in the process of adapting to this chronic disease.The present study aims to analyze the relationship between the difficulties of adapting to type 1 diabetes mellitus and the presence of clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression in pediatric patients. Our research is an exploratory cross-sectional study in which participated 23 children and adolescents in the age range of 6 to 16 years. All of them were attended in the Pediatric Endocrinology Unit of the General Hospital of Valencia. Our results point out the presence of psychological problems in these patients and a deficient adaptation to the disease. The regression analyses allow observing that the global score in adaptive response to disease predicts the scores in depression (19%), anxiety (16%), useless (17%), irritability (42%) and psycho-physiological symptoms (20%). The present work highlights that an inadequate response to disease in these patients influences their psychological well-being in a negative and significant way.