Resilience, emotion processing and emotion expression among youth with type 1 diabetes

Poor adherence to self‐care among youth with type‐1 diabetes ( YWD ) can lead to significant long‐term health problems. Negative diabetes‐related emotions ( NDRE ) are common, and are significantly correlated with poor/deteriorating A1c. Resilient youth handle diabetes self‐care challenges, such as adjusting for diabetes in public, better. Resiliency skills and perceptions include benefit finding ( BF ), fitting in with friends ( FI ), diabetes acceptance ( DA ), emotion processing ( EP ) and emotion expression ( EE ). First study goal: to verify structure of underlying measurement variables: NDRE , EP , EE , BF , DA , FI and comfort in adjusting for diabetes in public ( CA ) among youth 11–16 yr of age with diabetes. We also hypothesize: (i) YWD who engage in EP and EE will have higher levels of BF , FI , DA , (ii) EP and EE will moderate NDRE impact and (iii) higher levels of EP , EE , BF , FI and DA will be associated with higher CA . Subjects: 243 summer diabetes campers between 11–16 yr of age. Methods: Pre‐camp survey. Results: Measurement variables were verified. EP and EE to friends were positively associated with BF , FI and DA for most YWD . NDRE was negatively associated with FI and DA , and for YWD aged 14–16 yr with CA . FI was positively associated with CA . EE moderated the impact of NDRE on CA among youth 11–13 yr. R 2 for CA in youth 14–16 yr was 48.2%, for 11–13 yr was 38.3%. DA was positively associated with CA for youth 14–16 yr. Conclusions: Resilience factors appear to influence CA either directly or indirectly.