BODY IMAGE, RESILIENCE AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS OF TYPE 1 DIABETES

The Italian population with diabetes is in 5.3% of the entire population. The disease is most prevalent in the South where there emerges a percentage of 5.8% compared to 4.0% in the North. The objectives of this work are: - observe the possible presence of body disperception in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus; - consider how these patients perceive their illness in relation to the body image; - to evaluate the presence of a statistically significant correlation between the perception of the disease and the resilience strategies. The research was conducted on a sample of 157 subjects, 92 females and 65 males, with a mean age of 23.18 (dst = 8.23) through the administration of a test battery formed by the Illness Perception Questionnaire to assess the perception of the disease, Quality of Life to evaluate the perceived quality of life, Resilience Scale for Adults to observe the strategies of resilience and Body Uneasiness Test to evaluate the perception of the body image. The subjects were recruited in various Sicilian clinics. This study confirms the literature on the presence of bodily disperception in diabetic subjects (GSI = 1,204 dst = 0.79). There is a correlation between body despair and the duration of the disease (p <0.01), which confirms the literature. In the end the results show a statistically significant correlation between the size of the RSA and the perception of the disease (p <0.01), except for the size of the duration of the disease that does not correlate with resilience.