Boldyreva T.A., Narbekova E.F.
SOME PATTERNS OF MOTHER’S ATTITUDE TO THE ILLNESS OF A CHILD WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES MELLITUS ^{[№ 3 ' 2022]}
Diabetes mellitus is one of the diseases that can significantly change a person’s lifestyle, significantly reduce the quality of his socio-psychological functioning. The rate of increase in the incidence of diabetes mellitus is not decreasing, and the number of children whose lives are forced to change due to type 1 diabetes is also growing. The influence of diabetes mellitus on mental development is indirect, the negativity of this influence can be significantly reduced or even excluded if the social situation of the child’s development is relevant to both age and the limitations associated with the disease. The opportunity to organize such conditions exists only for the child’s family, and the main responsibilities for the care and upbringing of a sick child are often assumed by mothers. Meaning-forming in this context is the attitude to the mother’s illness. Since type 1 diabetes mellitus is a disease that requires constant monitoring of the child’s condition, the possibility of self–realization of the mother in this case in another area. In addition to child-parent and family relations, they also undergo some restrictions. The possibility of optimizing the mother’s attitude to the child’s illness in the context of her self–actualization has become the applied goal of our research; the identification of some patterns in this mental education is an empirical goal. A study was conducted with the participation of 15 mothers of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus. To identify some patterns in relation to the child’s illness, psychodiagnostic methods were applied: the method of diagnosing the attitude to the child’s illness (V.E. Kagan, I.P. Zhuravleva); semantic differential on concepts: my life, my child, my work, my past, my present, my future, my family, me; diagnostics of self-actualization of personality (A.V. Lazukin in adaptation by N. F. Kalinin). It was found that in relation to the child’s illness, activity control and hypernosognosia dominate in mothers, a general tension is clearly expressed, which increases due to anxiety as the length of the child’s illness increases. It is impossible to change the conditions of child care, to reduce the level of routine, and therefore the mother’s self-actualization suffers primarily in the professional sphere. This is confirmed by correlations between the values of evaluation factors, strength and activity according to the concepts “my work”, “my present” and “my future” proposed for evaluation by the semantic differential method. To optimize the attitude to the disease of a child with diabetes, such aspects of self-realization as autonomy, creativity and flexibility in communication are most important.