Running Head: Diabetes in Adolescences 1

Diabetes in Adolescences: A Review of the Literature

Francisco Tello

The University of Texas at El Paso

Diabetes in Adolescences 2

Abstract

Due to the growth of the disease known as Diabetes more people are thinking that they

have nothing to worry about but this is a bad mentality especially for the youth of the world.

With more data being compiled where adolescences have been showing up as diabetic problems.

The people need to know how this affects them physically but also mentally since most people

aren’t able to handle change or major problems. The people also have to see what has helped

others and how it can help them if they needed the help.
Diabetes in Adolescences 3

Diabetes in Adolescence: A Review of the Literature

Diabetes is a disease where the body those not use all the sugar that one eats. This could

be because there might not be enough insulin in the body to break it down. There are two types

of diabetes in the first type those who have it are dependent on having insulin being injected

regularly. The second type the patients are not required to get insulin injected but if they don’t

take care of themselves it could lead to them developing the first type. This also means that

anyone could have this disease without them even knowing it, which also means that people that

are young and barely starting their lives could have this making it one of the biggest growing

diseases in these times.

People should learn more about these things being something that happen to affect a large

percentage of people all around the world and still growing. When people talk about diabetes

they do not really think about like kids and adolescences being affected by it but people have to

see that this is becoming a younger disease. More and more adolescence are getting this disease

and people do not even know that this is happening since there is not enough information being

put out to the general public. What we need to see is that the word to get around and that

questions be answered, questions like:

1. How is this affecting the youth of today?

2. How to fix the problem and or prevent the problem?

The following literature review will explain what this disease has done to those affected

and how the problems have been looked upon and how they tried to fix it.
Diabetes in Adolescences 4

1. How has diabetes been affecting the lives of the youth of the world in the time of today?

The disease is growing in the youth community and it is affecting them, as it was written

here, “Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (DM 1) is the third most common chronic childhood disease and

can cause both short-term and long-term complications, as well as acute life-threatening events”,

As a case report written by the Department of Child Psychiatry, Athens University Medical

School. In this study they write that in the long run kids start to experience hardships that might

happen because of this disease. According to the Department of Child Psychiatry, Athens

University Medical School in a study they performed on a subject that has had the disease since

the age of 11. The subject had been experiencing depression, social withdraw and academic

impairment. He had lost all his friends and grew distant from his family and everyone that was

near him. Which lead him to become more aggressive and more distant towards everyone. They

had to put this subject into a special program to keep him from hurting himself or others the

study showed that this behavior happened because of his stress about his diabetic problems. In

another article they speak how the self-efficiency affects the patients and how this either helps

with dealing with distress or affects it. This article was written by School of Psychology,

University of Birmingham. This explains the way people are behaving in dealing with the

disease at such a young age and how the long-term compares to the short-term treatment. In their

conclusion the result was that those who doubted themselves weren’t able to meet the dietary

requirement. Which relates to the topic the first article explained which said that they affect the

way they act and think do to their stress induced by their disease and handling of that disease.
Diabetes in Adolescences 5

2. How to prevent and or stop the disease (diabetes) from spreading and affecting the

adolescence of the world?

Do to treatment of this disease people have been able to live with the disease for a long

time. These people just now have to live with either having themselves inject insulin into

their body or having a pump to keep your insulin level correct. In the study done in the article

written by Audrey Nelson, Jennifer A. Genthe, Kristin M. (Bertrang) Gall, Earline Edwards,

titled Patterns of Youths’ Glycemic Control with Insulin Pump Therapy they explain the

findings of their studies which showed that there was some test subjects that did have

improvements which showed that there are some people that can have their blood sugar level

low enough and keep it that way but it needs some work the study also showed that not all of

the test subjects did improve but that could have been due to an unknown variable that could

have been the emotions and or problems of the test subjects which again relates to the first

question.

Conclusion

The wide spread of this disease has had more victims causing some to alienate

themselves from others and to keep them from being able to deal with the problem since

there is always ways to deal with something. The way people go about to deal with problem

is in all sorts of the word different but the only thing one can do is to deal with the problem

whichever way one can. Since there is a way that has been tested and has worked there does

not seem for a need to worry about having this disease.

Diabetes in Adolescences 6

References:

1. Nouwen, A., Law, G., Hussain, S., McGovern, S., & Napier, H. (2009). Comparison of

the role of self-efficacy and illness representations in relation to dietary self-care and

diabetes distress in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Psychology & Health, 24(9), 1071-

1084. doi:10.1080/08870440802254597

2. Marini, E., Giannakopoulos, G., Charitaki, S., Belivanaki, M., Salavou, V., Liakopoulou,

M., & Kolaitis, G. (2013). Mental health of adolescents with type I diabetes: A case

report. Health (1949-4998), 5(8), 1268-1271. doi:10.4236/health.2013.58172

3. Nelson, A., Genthe, J. A., (Bertrang) Gall, K. M., & Edwards, E. (2009). Patterns of

Youths' Glycemic Control with Insulin Pump Therapy. Pediatric Nursing, 35(4), 234-

239.