| Description |
Adolescents with type 1 diabetes find managing their disease difficult and they often experience problems in adhering to their diabetes regimen. Adolescents who are able to find benefits from their diabetes may be able to maintain better diabetes management, in part as they are able to process and regulate the emotions that arise as they deal with difficult management behaviors. 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 137 adolescents (M age=13.8 years, range 11-16 years, SD=1.52; 54% female) who participated at the third assessment of a larger longitudinal study examining adolescent diabetes management within the family context. Adolescents completed self report measures of benefit finding, adherence to diabetes regimen, emotion regulation, and measures of family functioning (e.g., perceptions of collaboration with parent, Berg, Schindler, and Marajh (2008); and parental acceptance, Epstein, 1983). Multiple regressions indicated that greater benefit finding was associated with better adherence, with analyses indicating that better emotion regulation mediated these effects. Benefit finding was more frequent in families characterized by greater acceptance and collaboration. Findings from this study imply that interventions for adolescents geared toward assisting with processing and regulation of emotions may be especially important for adherence in addition to fostering a positive family environment. |
