Situating Stress: Lessons from Lay Discourses on Diabetes

Researchers increasingly are examining physical and psychological pathways that affect and are affected by diabetes, including stress. While biomedical researchers and practitioners are beginning to recognize the association between stress and diabetes onset and management, laypersons have long-standing and extensive insights into the multiple ways in which stress is associated with the diabetes disease process. This chapter examines lay perspectives on stress and diabetes among a multiethnic sample of eighty adults. Participants suggest varying arenas in which stress intersects with diabetes, including stress as implicated in the origin of diabetes, as a threat to maintaining glycemic control, as a challenge to self-management, and as a precursor to and a consequence of diabetes complications.