Learned helplessness in diabetic youths

Determined the relationships among the learned helplessness attributional style, depression, regimen adherence, and metabolic control in a sample of diabetic youth. Fifty children (20 male and 30 female) between the ages of 10 and 16 completed the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire and the Children's Depression Inventory. Regimen adherence was assessed with three 24-hr recall interviews conducted separately with patients and their mothers over a 1-week period. Metabolic control was measured by glycosylat-ed hemoglobin Al (HbAl). Learned helplessness was significantly associat-ed with depression (p <.001) and HbAl (p <.02), but was not associated with regimen adherence. Depression was unrelated to regimen adherence and metabolic control. The adherence measures together accounted for 24 % of the variance of HbAl. Significant correlations were obtained between HbA 1 and the exercise (p <.05) and eating/testing frequency (p <.05) adherence factors, indicating that lower levels of adherence were associated with worse metabolic control. Age, pubertal status, sex, disease duration, and SES were unrelated to regimen adherence and metabolic control. These results sup-port the notion that the learned helplessness attributional style for negativ