Authors' objectives: Looking after diabetes involves taking on new roles and responsibilities, and is the key to success in achieving the best diabetes control. In type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of diabetes and occurs in middle-age, the body cannot use the insulin very well and the pancreas is progressively producing less insulin. The patient has to make changes to their diet, do more exercise, check blood sugars, take tablets to bring the blood sugar down, and other tablets to control blood pressure and cholesterol. After about 10 years, they may have to start taking insulin injections. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas has stopped making any insulin at all, and patients must take insulin every day to survive. For best control, they should correct the insulin dose according to the amount of carbohydrates and exercise. There are education programmes which give the necessary information and skills to manage diabetes mostly by ourselves. However even after attending these education programmes, many patients remain unmotivated to look after their diabetes. There are many emotional reasons for this. People find it hard to accept they have diabetes, and that they must look after it 24/7 for the rest of their lives or they will get diabetes complications such as going blind, losing their feet and kidneys. This can develop into depression. They might get low blood sugars and collapse (hypoglycaemia). The fear of hypoglycaemia or of developing complications is a burden. People with diabetes can experience stigma from their family and friends, and young people want to feel normal. Sometimes patients tend to forget managing their diabetes, which is a type of denial. Medications can have side effects. Insulin injections can be painful and can make people put on weight, which can put patients off injections. These reasons can be changed by talking therapies which help to identify the reasons why someone is not looking after their diabetes and then support the patient to challenge their negative thoughts and feelings and be more motivated and confident. We still do not know fully if these talking therapies can help a person manage their diabetes better. We aim to find all the studies that have used talking therapies to support diabetes self-management. We will organise the information from these studies to find out which communication techniques help the most in getting better diabetes control, and at the same time help reduce the costs for the NHS. We will also find out which groups of patients benefit the most. We will look at children and adults with type 1 diabetes separately from type 2 diabetes. The scientific methods will be based on well established procedures (using guidelines from the Cochrane Collaboration) for collecting, breaking down and then bringing together again all the information from all the relevant studies. Our findings will help GPs and hospitals to develop psychological services using the best evidence. It will also help to decide whether we need to do more research in this area.

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hta/1421310

Year Published: 2020

URL for published report: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hta/1421310

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: England, United Kingdom

Organisation Name: NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme

Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK

Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

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