The effect of family support, knowledge, and socioeconomic status in controlling diabetes and its complications on the patient

Abstract

Background: About 422 million people with diabetes worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, and the disease directly causes 1.5 million fatalities yearly. Objectives: to assess the impact of patients’ knowledge and family factors in controlling (DM) and its complications. Methods: a cross-sectional study was done on 137 DM patients. The Diabetes Care Profile (DCP) developed by the Michigan diabetes research and training center was used to measure the social and psychological factors of DM. Results: 79.6% of the participants were checking their blood sugar and 39.5% were keeping a record of blood sugar test results. Of them, 23.4% had good DM education and 54.7% and 3.6% had fair and good DM understanding respectively. Almost 50% had good social support, 43.8 had good DM control and 56.2% had a good attitude toward DM. Of them, 47.4% had good diet adherence, 46% had long-term care benefit and only 27.7% had good monitoring and understanding management practice. Participants who had good DM understanding had a significantly higher percentage of those who were checking their blood sugar. A significant positive correlation was found between the Control Problems Scale and both the support scale and the Diabetes Attitude Scale (DAS-3). A significant positive correlation was found between the support scale and the health status scale and the Diabetes Attitude Scale (DAS-3). Conclusion: a relation between family support, knowledge, and socioeconomic status was found to have an effect on diabetes control and complications. Keywords: support, knowledge, socioeconomic, controlling, diabetes, Saudi Arabia