Insulin, love and care

Beside a physiological substitution of insulin, psychosocial care is probably the most important part of the management of diabetes in children and adolescents. This is well known by every experienced clinician but very difficult to document scientifically. Traditional methods useful and necessary in clinical or experimental research are often rough and irrelevant in the description of complicated and 'soft' psychological phenomena, and statistical methods are of little help to prove whether the feelings of a child are acceptable or not. Based on one single case history, the psychological crisis of the child who gets diabetes as well as the attitudes of the medical staff are discussed.