How will diabetes and its treatment impact my loved ones?

How will diabetes and its treatment impact my loved ones?

Anne Peters, MD, FACP, CDE (Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Programs, USC Keck School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: Does taking additional insulin correct a high blood sugar level?; Why is my blood pressure important if I have diabetes?; What are the most common causes of death for people with diabetes? and more...

When people get diabetes, they often have family members who've had diabetes and in many cases they've seen family members go blind or go on dialysis or have just horrible deaths and so there's an element of fear in both the patient and also in the family members. I think that like all things, there's all sorts of ways to deal with fear the least productive way to deal with diabetes though, is denial. The best way is to take the family together and say let's deal with this as a unit, let's figure out how to cook food for all of us that's healthier, let's figure out a way that we can all change our exercise patterns. I think often people with diabetes and their families need to see a therapist. They may need to deal with the depression that comes with getting this diagnosis. Many people with diabetes need to take antidepressants for depression. There's a lot that needs to go on with a family and the individual to psychologically accomodate to this, but once people do, it just becomes part of who they are, just like anything else. A normal adjustment to a stressful situation that can end up really happily.