The Role of Behavior in Diabetes Care

Abstract

The treatment of people with diabetes mellitus almost always involves an effort on the part of the health-care team to impose new patterns of behavior on their patients. Too often this behavior modification is undertaken without any specific attention to factors in the treatment regimen that may enhance or detract from patient compliance. If, however, the treatment of disease is viewed in terms of changes in both physiology and behavior, the importance of intervention aimed at either direct behavioral manipulation of physiology, or alterations of secondary behavior related to the disease and its therapy, becomes apparent. We have reviewed in this paper the current “state of the art” of both direct behavioral treatment of diabetes and techniques to enhance compliance with treatment program.