Meaning attached to compliance with self-care, and conditions for compliance among young diabetics

This paper presents a hypothetical model of the compliance with self-care of young diabetics, its features, its meaning to them and the preconditions for compliance with self-care. The aim of this research was to develop a model to clarify and expand existing knowledge concerning compliance with self-care among young diabetics and to produce new ideas for planning and implementing this care. Four categories of behavioural pattern were identified. Those young people with good compliance experienced a sense of well-being, health, and freedom. They were responsible, active, and well motivated in voluntarily implementing self-care. The second group were those whose actions deviated only slightly from health regimens but who had undergone many negative experiences with self-care. Their actions were guided only by compulsion. The third group were consciously non-compliant. Their constant neglect of health regimens was associated with feelings of poor health, fears and indifference. They were not motivated to comply, felt that the aims set were too high and the self-care programme too tightly regimented. They felt that they received no encouragement. The young people belonging to the fourth group frankly refused to pursue self-care. Their non-compliance was seen by them as an issue of freedom. In effect, their friends controlled their lives, and they felt that their self-care was all the more unnecessary since nobody encouraged them to keep to it.