Effect of personality on blood glucose control in patients with type 1 diabetes

Objective: The diagnosis of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1) has a major impact on young people and their families. Psychosocial factors, patient motivation, participation and acceptance of the disease are essential to achieve good blood glucose control. Our aims were to analyse personality traits and how they are related to blood glucose control in patients with DM1.Methods: Sixty-two patients with DM1 over 18 years of age, with at least one-year disease duration and absence of advanced chronic complications were studied. Clinical, biological and personality parameters were measured. The Millon Index of Personality Styles was administered for personality assessment.Results: Significant correlations between different personality variables and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) values were found. Individuals with poor blood glucose control had significantly higher scores on the Feeling-guided (53.6 f 25.7 vs 36.2 f 26.8, p = 0.021), Innovation-seeking (36.7 f 24.1 vs 21.9 f 21.4, p = 0.025), Dissenting (41.1 f 24.4 vs 15.6 f 16.6, p = 0.001), Submissive (41.5 f 25.1 vs 28.3 f 14.7, p = 0.038) and Dissatisfied (37.5 f 27.5 vs 19.5 f 20.2, p = 0.015) scales. This psychological profile is characterised by greater focus on emotions and personal values (feeling-guided), the tendency to reject conventional ideas (innovation-seeking), an aversion to complying with norms and a preference for auton-omy (unconventional/dissenting), labile self-confidence (submissive/yielding) and expressed disagreement with others (dissatisfied/complaining). Factor analysis based on the main compo-nents of the variance yielded four factors. Factor characterised as related to rebelliousness or independent judgement and action was correlated with poor blood glucose control (r = 0.402, p < 0.05).Conclusion: The rebellious or non-conformist personality type is closely associated with poor blood glucose control in patients with DM1.(c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. on behalf of SEEN y SED. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study analyzed the relationship between personality traits and blood glucose control in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1). The study found that patients with poor blood glucose control had higher scores in feeling-guided, innovation-seeking, dissenting, submissive, and dissatisfied scales. The rebellious or non-conformist personality type was closely associated with poor blood glucose control.