Research Article: Effects of Coping Skills Training in School‐age Children with Type 1 Diabetes

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Research Article: Effects of Coping Skills Training in School‐age Children with Type 1 Diabetes
DOI: 10.1002/nur.20336
Overview of the Study
The research article by Grey, et al. discusses the effect of Coping Skills Training on children with type 1 Diabetes. The study is a randomized controlled trial with the goal of providing an intervention to prevent psychosocial issues and conflicts within the family that may be caused by the lifestyle of a child with type 1 Diabetes has. Coping Skills Training is an approach that is based on the social cognitive theory wherein learning and rehearsing a new behavior can improve self-reliance which then encourages wanted behaviors. Coping Skills Training promotes retraining which improves mastery. For children with type 1 Diabetes, Coping Skills Training is applicable in terms of promoting healthy coping mechanisms and behaviors, especially because of the demanding nature of this chronic illness in their lives. As the intervention in this study, Coping Skills Training is provided to the child with type 1 diabetes and to both parents for them to develop communication skills, problem-solving in social settings, healthy self-dialogue, stress management, and the recognition and association of thoughts and feelings. This will be done once a week for six consecutive weeks with the children in groups but is separate from their parents who will have their own sessions. After each session, communication regarding certain issues and concerns are shared between both parents and their child. The comparison treatment that will be used to determine the effects of Coping Skills Training is Group Education. Group Education is done by putting the children in a conducive and controlled environment or condition, wherein the child will be taught patient education about Diabetes. Similar to Coping Skills Training, participation is encouraged and this is done by small group discussions and sharing of knowledge. The Group Education is conducted every week for 4 sessions. Both interventions lasted for 1.5 hours per session. The outcomes that were measured in this study are the following: metabolic control (HBA1C), child’s quality of life (Diabetes Quality of Life Scale), depressive symptoms (Children’s Depression Inventory), coping (Issues in Coping with TID – Child Scale), self-efficacy (Self-efficacy for Diabetes Scale), family functioning (Diabetes Family Behavior Scale), and demographic and clinical data. The data analysis in this research study that was used is random coefficient regression analysis with the intention to treat analyses.
The result of the study indicates that there is no significant difference when comparing the Coping Skills Training intervention group and the Group Education intervention in terms of HBA1C, quality of life, coping depressive symptoms, and family function. When measuring the rate of change in both intervention and comparison group, there is improved measure concerning the quality of life, depression, coping, and self-efficacy, but these results were evident on self-sufficient children who participated in additional efforts in managing their type 1 Diabetes, also e...