Article

Benefit finding, affective reactions to diabetes stress, and diabetes management among early adolescents.

Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390-9044, USA.
Health Psychology (impact factor: 3.87). 03/2011; 30(2):212-9. DOI:10.1037/a0022378 pp.212-9
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT To examine whether benefit finding was associated with better adjustment among adolescents with diabetes by buffering negative affective reactions to diabetes stress and by promoting positive affective reactions.
Early adolescents aged 10-14 with Type 1 diabetes (n = 252) described recent diabetes stressors, affective reactions, and perceived coping effectiveness. They also completed measures of benefit finding, depressive symptoms, and adherence. Metabolic control (i.e., HbA1c) was obtained from medical records.
The main outcome measures were perceived coping effectiveness, depressive symptoms, adherence, and HbA1c.
Benefit finding was associated with lower depressive symptoms, higher perceived coping effectiveness and better adherence, and with higher positive as well as negative affective reactions to diabetes stress. Benefit finding interacted with negative affective reactions to predict depressive symptoms and HbA1c. Negative affective reactions to stress were associated with poorer adjustment among those with low benefit finding, but were unrelated or more weakly related to poor adjustment among those with high benefit finding. Positive affective reactions did not mediate associations between benefit finding and any outcome.
Consistent with a stress-buffering process, benefit finding may be a resource that buffers the disruptive aspects of negative affective reactions to stress for adolescents' diabetes management.

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Keywords

adolescents' diabetes management
 
affective reactions
 
buffering negative affective reactions
 
buffers
 
depressive symptoms
 
diabetes stress
 
disruptive aspects
 
HbA1c
 
higher positive
 
low benefit
 
lower depressive symptoms
 
medical records
 
Metabolic control
 
Negative affective reactions
 
poor adjustment
 
poorer adjustment
 
Positive affective reactions
 
recent diabetes stressors
 
stress-buffering process
 
Type 1 diabetes
 

Vincent Tran