Diabetes and Couples: Protective and Risk Factors

This book shows how psychological aspects of individuals and of couple relationships can work as both protective or risk factors to the health of diabetes patients and their partners. Departing from a social psychologic perspective, it analyzes how individual attributes and personal relationships influence health, focusing on the impacts that diabetes as a chronic-degenerative disease has on the psychological state of the patient and on their most immediate social context. 

The volume is divided in three parts: the first focuses on the patient, the second on the partner and the third on the couple relationship. The first part examines how attachment styles, optimism, resilience, self-efficacy in emotional regulation, loneliness and rumination impact the stress experienced by the diabetic patient. The second part analyzes how the partner’s altruism, affectivity, jealousy, criticism or indifference affects the physical health of the diabetic patient. Finally, the third part explores the relationship between negative emotions and the couple’s motives of conflict, as well as the effects of the communication styles used, emotional warmth and empathy in the satisfaction with the relationship in couples where one of the members is a diabetes patient.

Diabetes and Couple Relationship: Protective and Risk Factors will be a valuable resource for researchers, students and professionals in the fields of health and clinical psychology, social psychology and public health interested in better understanding how personal characteristics and relationships can affect the physical and psychological health of chronic disease patients, as well as their well-being and quality of life.