Can You Reduce Diabetes Symptomatology by Becoming Your 'Best Possible Self': The Role of Stress and Resilience

Can You Reduce Diabetes Symptomatology by Becoming Your 'Best Possible Self': The Role of Stress and Resilience

Can You Reduce Diabetes Symptomatology by Becoming Your 'Best Possible Self': The Role of Stress and Resilience

The purpose of this study is to examine how the 'Best Possible Self' (BPS) intervention influences diabetes symptomatology over a four week period by assessing stress and resilience as mediatory effects. Half of the participants will receive the BPS straight away while the other half will be put on a waiting list and will act as the control group.

The BPS is a "positive" psychology intervention; i.e. it facilitates positive emotion in order to achieve psychological, behavioural, and even physiological changes. The present team's previous research has demonstrated that the BPS is effective at reducing certain diabetes symptoms, though the exact mechanisms by which it does so are unclear. According to the Stress Buffering Model of Physical Activity, psychological stress is the catalyst that triggers behavioural and physiological responses critical to health while positive emotions can improve health by helping people to cope. The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions, meanwhile, suggests that this is because positive emotions allow people to build resilience. In this study, the aim is to examine whether stress and resilience in particular mediate the relationship between intervention and diabetes symptoms. Research around stress and resilience has shown these factors to be important not only in the physical health of people with diabetes but for also decreasing illness symptomatology in non-clinical samples more generally.

Participants receive a tailored version of Laura King's 'Best Possible Self' intervention: a brief, self-administered, psychological intervention. It is fundamentally a writing exercise, whereby recipients are asked to spend 10 minutes writing about their best possible future self and the steps they need to take to become that person. This helps the individual set goals while facilitating positive affect. Our version of the task has people focus on their health-related goals in particular.

Participants are informed that they are on a waiting list and will receive the intervention at the end of the study.

A writing exercise developed in 2001 by Laura King. The frequency of engagement with the exercise is down to the user's discretion though we recommend to them to write things down once every week for the duration of the study.

Subscales assess the existence of, and the distress caused by, fatigue, cognitive, pain, sensory, cardiology, ophthalmology, hypoglycaemia, and hyperglycaemia symptoms individually. For each sub-scale, participants can score between 0 and 5, with a lower score meaning fewer symptoms and less distress caused by that subset of symptoms. Subscales do not come together to create a total symptomatology score.

Mediatory Effect. Individual scores are added up and can range from 0-40. A higher score means that the individuals perceives themselves to be more stressed.

Mediatory Effect. Responses are added up to give a score between 6 and 30. The total sum is then divided by 6 (the number of questions). A higher score indicates a higher level of resilience.

Control Variable. A total risk score is assessed by summing up the scores of each of the 12 questions. Scores range from 0-87. A lower score indicates less risk. Participants with a score of < 21 are low risk, participants with a score of 21 - 32 are medium risk, and participants with a score of >32 are high risk.

Inclusion Criteria: Non-clinical sample 18+ Access to the internet Exclusion Criteria: Severe mental illness (such as schizophrenia or bipolar depression)