The Role of Social Support in Self-care Behavior of Diabetes Patients: a Narrative Review

Diabetes is one of the major concerns in the third millennium; affecting more people every day. The prevalence of this disease in Iran is reported to be high (about 7.7%). The most important method to control this disease and prevent its complications from happening is self-care. According to various studies, this method has not found its appropriate place among patients with diabetes due to several reasons. The present study aimed at determining the relationship between social support, specially family support, in self-care behavior of diabetes patients. This study was a narrative review in which papers of cross-sectional, cohort, clinical trial and systematic review designs were selected using data bases and scientific search engines such as PubMed, ProQuest, SCOPUS, and Elsevier with the keywords diabetes, social support and self-care. Moreover, Persian papers were selected from MEDLAB and IRANMEDEX data bases and through searching the websites of original research papers published in Iran. All the papers had been published from 1990 to 2011. The results of the study indicated that the status of self-care and social support in patients with diabetes was not favorable. The studied papers all showed that not only was there a positive correlation between social support and self-care behavior, but also some of the studies pointed to the positive effect of social support of, especially family support and more specifically the patient’s spouse, on controlling blood sugar level and HbA1c. As social support can predict health promoting behavior, this concept is also capable of predicting self-care behavior of patients with diabetes. Therefore, involving the family members, especially the spouse, in self-care behavior can be of significant importance in providing health care to patients with diabetes.