[Coping styles, psychosocial factors and adjustment processes in patients with type I and II diabetes].

Coping is defined by Perlin and Shooler as "... that behavior that protects people from psychological pressure due to social situations and problems". This intention Lazarus and Folkman affirm: "... the coping allows people to use different abilities to manage the difficulties (stressors) that they experience in daily existence..." When the stressor is diabetes, the requirements and pressures due to the illness and its physiological and psychosocial consequences are continuous and become chronic. In numerous studies, the coping, suitable or not, has been linked to different medical consequences of the diabetes: changes in glycosylated hemoglobin levels, in the physiological functionality, in the specific symptomatology, in body weight and body mass index. In other research, as in the present contribution, the coping and specific socio-cognitive dimensions have been correlated with the psychosocial consequences of the diabetes, particularly with quality of life and psychological and social adaptation (PSA). This last concept refers, within the illness process, to the attainment of the characteristic behavioral and psychological objectives of recovery. The purpose of the present work is to individualize the coping styles and to note the correlations with socio-cognitive dimensions in diabetic patients, and to measure their incidence on the APS, answering to a series of questions, such as: "What are the modalities of a more functional coping? Are they correlated with the socio-cognitive dimensions? Together do they influence the APS processes?". To 123 diabetic patients (51 with diabetes type 1; 72 with diabetes type 2), with a middle age of 63.7 and 54.9, respectively, have been administered, in sequence, two questionnaires: an adaptation of the Bernese Coping Modes (BECOMO) of Heim et coll. and the Multidimensional Diabetes Questionnaire (MDQ) of Talbot et coll. The results, by using descriptive statistics and data analysis techniques, seem to point out that, in the two groups of diabetic patients, it is possible to identify different modalities of coping that favors both different levels of APS and categories of dissimilar APS.