The different approaches to psychology and how they would be relevant to a study of diabetic teenagers’ adherence to a diet Diabetes or Diabetes mellitus is a medical condition where the body is unable to maintain correct sugar (glucose) levels in the blood. The condition is treatable, either in the form of insulin injections, tablets, adhering to a diet that will help maintain correct sugar levels, or in some instances a combination of the above. The most common course of treatment is the use of a controlled diet.
Diabetics are often told to pay special attention to carbohydrate intake. But why is it that when given this information, some people are more likely to adhere to the program than others? With reference to the different approaches of psychology I will try to begin to answer this question, with special consideration towards teenagers. There are five main different approaches of psychology, each one of which will throw different theories and explanations as to why some diabetic teenagers adhere to a diet, and others do not.
Each approach focuses on different aspects of human behaviour, and has different ideas, beliefs, attitudes and view points. Cognitive psychologists study the different ways in which the mind processes information. They study through experiments and natural observation, how people acquire, store and use knowledge, (processes which in turn lead to our beliefs and understanding). They believe that our behaviour is controlled by mental processes including memory (how we remember information), perception, and problem solving.
Often cognitive psychologists refer to the mind as a computer, due to the systematic way we absorb information. One way in which cognitive psychologists would explain a teenager’s adherence to a diet would be by explaining that the patient would see the illness as a problem that needed to be overcome and would hence use problem solving skills to achieve this. One of the most useful theories of cognitive psychology in reference to this study would be to look at the Health Belief Model (HBM).
This is a psychological model that tries to explain and predict health behaviours by focussing on the beliefs and attitudes of individuals. It explains the likelihood of taking recommended health action to be; the perceived benefits of action, minus perceived barriers to action, (Payne, S et al, 2002, page 29), i. e. the benefits of preventative action must outweigh the barriers to preventative action if the recommended action is to be taken.
Perceived barriers to preventative action include perceived threat, susceptibility, and seriousness of the disease. So this theory may explain lack of adherence to a diet due to an individual not perceiving the disease as a threat (this could be due to lack of knowledge about the illness), believing that they are not susceptible to it (views the illness as something that can be dangerous to others but not themselves), and believing the illness not to be a serious condition.