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Show HONORS COLLEGE SPRING 2013 Susan Fink Cynthia Berg THE ROLE OF EMOTION REGULATION IN UNDERSTANDING THE LINK BETWEEN BENEFIT FINDING AND ADHERENCE IN ADOLESCENTS WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES Susan Fink (Cynthia Berg) Department of Psychology University of Utah Adolescents with type 1 diabetes find managing their disease difficult and they often experience problems in adherence to their diabetes regimen. Adolescents w h o are able to find benefits from their diabetes may be able to maintain better health and psychological outcomes, in part as they are able to process and regulate the emotions that arise as they deal with difficult management behaviors. In addition, evidence illustrates that benefit finding may also be more prevalent in high functioning families that support emotion regulation, collaboration, and communication as well as benefit finding. The aim of this study was to examine whether benefit finding was associated with better adherence and whether these effects were due to emotional regulation strategies. Participants were 194 adolescents (M age=13.5 years, range 11-16 years, SD=1.52; 89 males, 101 females) w h o participated at the third assessment of a larger longitudinal study examining adolescent diabetes management within the family context. Adolescents completed multiple self report measures in regards to their benefit finding, adherence to diabetes regimen, emotion regulation, as well as measures relating to family functioning (e.g., perceptions of collaboration with parent- Berg et al., 2008; and parental acceptance- Epstein, 1983). Multiple regressions indicated that benefit finding was associated with adherence, with analyses indicating that emotion regulation measures mediated these effects. Benefit finding was more frequent in families characterized by greater acceptance and involved positive parenting practices. Findings from this study imply that interventions for adolescents geared toward assisting with processing and regulation of emotions m a y be especially important for adherence in addition to a positive family environment. |
