Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: This study examines how social support affect the quality of life and depression of diabetic patients. Social support has been known to predict psychosocial outcomes such as depression or quality of life. Yet this relationship has not been extensively studied in the diabetic population. In the diabetes literature, the little research that examined social support mainly focused on its contribution to diabetes management behaviors and little has been known about its relationship to psychosocial outcomes. This study examines the effects of social support on the psychosocial outcomes of diabetic patients by differentiating the types of social support (adherence support vs. emotional support) and examines their impact on depression and health related quality of life.

Methods: A sample of 151 adult patients were drawn from 2 diabetes clinics in Seoul, Korea and analyzed. Data was collected by one-on-one interviews on depression, diabetes-quality of life (as measure with impact of illness and satisfaction), social support (adherence support vs. emotional support), and other health indicators (SF-12, HbA1c, illness duration). Hierarchical regressions on depression, impact of illness and life satisfaction were conducted in addition to the bivariate correlation analyses between the variables.

Results: Social support, specifically emotional support was significantly associated with depression and diabetes quality of life, after controlling for the effects of age, sex, family composition, health status, illness duration and blood glucose level. In contrast, adherence support was not related to either depression or diabetes quality of life when controlling for other variables. Social support added 3 to 11% of explained variance when controlling for the effects of demographic and illness variables. Throughout all 3 regression models, health status was the strongest predictor.

Implications for Practice: The results of this study confirm the importance of social support for diabetic patients' psychosocial outcomes. While there has been a tendency in the practice of diabetes education to focus on adherence support, the results of this study shows that emotional support plays a significant role for the psychosocial functioning of diabetic patients. Therefore diabetes educators should not only focus on improving adherence behaviors through tangential (adherence) support, but also recognize the role of emotional support that improves patients' quality of life.