PEDIATRICS Vol. 48 No. 1 July 1971, pp. 123-128
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BODY IMAGE CHANGES IN TEEN-AGE DIABETICS

Richard V. Kaufman M.D.1 and Betsy Hersher B.A.1

1 Department of Psychiatry and the Silvain and Arma Wyler Children's Hospital, The University of Chicago, Chicago

Fantasies of five diabetic teen-agers about their illness were collected in a study of the relationship between body illness and body image. All of the subjects revealed underlying distortions of their knowledge of the disease process bated on primitive notions about physical causality. The imagery employed was strongly visual and illness was seen as the result of external deprivation, or of various internal abnormalities and deficiencies, such as absence of part of the pancreas, blockage within the pancreas, or dilatation of the stomach. The influence of previous instruction and education by the medical staff was found to be superficial and in all cases the children's intellectual knowledge was incorporated into their own private thought systems.

The patients drew what the illness meant to them rather than what they knew about the pathophysiological processes, and in this way demonstrated the link between physical illness and body image. The patients described feeling seriously damaged by the diabetes, and were able to graphically symbolize their conceptions of this damage. Knowledge that the child's illness significantly alters a part of the self contributes to greater precision and effectiveness in communication.




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E. Kohler
Diabetic Day: Setting Goals for a Child-Directed Ambulatory Program
Clinical Pediatrics, January 1, 1978; 17(1): 24 - 28.
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