Abstract
The personality development in 59 diabetic children, 27 boys and 32 girls, 7-15 years old has been studied. The duration of the disease exceeded one year in all cases. The personality assessment included an intelligence test, protective techniques and interviews with the children, their parents, and teachers. The protective techniques consistently indicated a much higher frequency of emotional disturbances and adjustment problems in the diabetic children than in a control group of healthy children matched for age, intelligence, and social group. These emotional disturbances concerned fundamental personality processes such as the development of the body image perception, and the ego structure, and the progress of the identification process. These personality data have been correlated to clinical variables such as age at onset of the disease, duration and degree of control, and to some electroencephalo graphic data. Although this analysis gave some interesting correlations between clinical data and personality, the interviews with the parents showed a more apparent relation between the personality structure of the diabetic children and the attitudes and reactions of the parents to the disease and its impact on the family situation.
Article PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fällström, K., Olofsson, O. & Karlberg, P. On the personality development in diabetic schoolchildren. Pediatr Res 8, 911 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197411000-00079
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197411000-00079