Resilience, emotion processing and emotion expression among youth with type 1 diabetes

Poor adherence to self‐care among youth with type‐1 diabetes (YWD) can lead to significant long‐term health problems. Negative diabetes‐related emotions (NDRE) are common, and are significantly correlated with poor/deteriorating A1c. Resilient youth handle diabetes self‐care challenges, such as adjusting for diabetes in public, better. Resiliency skills and perceptions include benefit finding (BF), fitting in with friends (FI), diabetes acceptance (DA), emotion processing (EP) and emotion expression (EE). First study goal: to verify structure of underlying measurement variables: NDRE, EP, EE, BF, DA, FI and comfort in adjusting for diabetes in public (CA) among youth 11–16 yr of age with diabetes. We also hypothesize: (i) YWD who engage in EP and EE will have higher levels of BF, FI, DA, (ii) EP and EE will moderate NDRE impact and (iii) higher levels of EP, EE, BF, FI and DA will be associated with higher CA. Subjects: 243 summer diabetes campers between 11–16 yr of age. Methods: Pre‐camp survey. Results: Measurement variables were verified. EP and EE to friends were positively associated with BF, FI and DA for most YWD. NDRE was negatively associated with FI and DA, and for YWD aged 14–16 yr with CA. FI was positively associated with CA. EE moderated the impact of NDRE on CA among youth 11–13 yr. R2 for CA in youth 14–16 yr was 48.2%, for 11–13 yr was 38.3%. DA was positively associated with CA for youth 14–16 yr. Conclusions: Resilience factors appear to influence CA either directly or indirectly.