Religiosity and Spiritual/Religious Coping in Adults with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Spirituality/Religiosity (S/R) plays an important role in chronic diseases coping, improvement of quality of life (QL) and adherence to treatment. There is a gap in studies regarding Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) coping and if S/R can help in metabolic control and complications decrease.
 
 OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the religiosity profile and relevance of spiritual/religious coping in adult patients with T1DM.
 
 METHOD: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study conducted in outpatient care in 56 T1DM patients in a tertiary service. Patients filled out questionnaires referring to demographic and clinical data, socioeconomic classification, the Index of Religiosity of the University of Duke - Duke scale (DUREL), and an adaptated Spiritual-Religious Coping scale (SRCOPE).
 
 RESULTS: The analysis of the positive SRCOPE (PSRCOPE) showed a low / medium score (3.3 ± 0.7), whereas for the negative SRCOPE (NSRCOPE) it was low (2.0 ± 0.7), and the use of the total SRCOPE was considered high (3.7 ± 0.4), the NSRCOPE/ PSRCOPE ratio was 0.7 ± 0.2, demonstrating a predominance of PSRCOPE in relation to NSRCOPE. The organizational, non-organizational and intrinsic religiosities presented a correlation with PSRCOPE and total SRCOPE. Only intrinsic religiosity showed a significant correlation with anxiety and depression.
 
 CONCLUSION: It was found that non-organizational and intrinsic religiosity had a high index. The obtained score for positive and negative SRCOPE showed a PSRCOPE predominance. There was significant correlation, between the scores of religiosity and coping. The next step is to evaluate the impact of these findings in clinical practice.