Mental and Physical Health Among Latinx Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Social Networks

Background and Purpose: Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) exhibit poor mental and physical health, which in turn can contribute to more diabetes complications and worse quality of life. In particular, Latinx patients with T2DM in the Southwest region face additional challenges related to health care and access to resources, leading to limited treatment of their mental and physical health. Social relationships have been found to promote one’s mental and physical well-being. However, previous studies have generally focused only on the functional component of social relationships by using aggregated measures of social support, rather than additionally examining the structural component of them by identifying specific network members who provide support related to mental and physical health. Thus, we examined the effects of perceived social support and social networks on mental and physical health status among Latinx patients with T2DM. Because larger and diversified networks have been associated with beneficial effects on well-being, we focused on these network domains of Latinx patients living in ethnic enclaves.

Methods: Latinx patients with T2DM were recruited from a community health center in the Southwest region of the U.S between February and December 2019. Cross-sectional personal network data on 102 participants were collected by bilingual interviewers using nine name generating questions and a series of name interpreting questions. Personal network analysis (PNA) was conducted to measure network size and heterogeneity of relationship strength with network members, frequency of contact with network members, and geographic distance with network members. Perceived social support and mental and physical health statuses were measured by standardized scales. Bivariate correlations were analyzed to examine the relationship between social support and each network variable. Then, ordinary least square regression analyses were performed to examine how social support and social networks were associated with mental and physical health status, while controlling for participants’ age, gender, language preference, education, and marital status. Due to collinearity among personal network variables, analyses were conducted separately for each network variable (N=95).

Results: Bivariate correlations indicated that perceived social support was negatively correlated to heterogeneity of relationship strength with network members (r=.27; p<.01). At the multivariate level, patients with a larger network size (β=.26; p<.05) reported to have better mental health status, whereas those with a higher heterogeneity of geographic distance with network members (β=-.22; p<.05) reported to have poorer mental health status. Patients with a higher heterogeneity of frequency of contact with network members (β=-.35; p<.01) reported to have poorer physical health status.

Conclusions and Implications: We found that being connected with more network members was associated with better mental health, whereas being geographically distant with network members at varying levels was associated with poorer mental health and having more variations in contact frequency with network members was associated with poorer physical health. Social support was not associated with mental or physical health status. Our findings underscore the importance of measuring personal social networks through PNA in addition to overall social support to better understand how social relationships affect mental and physical health.