Journal of Public Health and Diseases

Data on coping mechanism of patients with diabetes mellitus (type I and II) are important yet lacking in developing countries like Nigeria, and particularly in southwest Nigeria. Diabetes mellitus (DM), one of the leading Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) has a major impact on both the diagnosed individual and the public health system, hence the present study. The study was aimed at investigating coping mechanism among patients with DM in University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. A cross sectional survey was used for the study. The study population were patients with DM (type1 & type 2) that have been diagnosed for not less than 3 months and are on admission in UCH or on follow up in outpatient clinic. A quantitative study of sample size of 76 patients was used. Male and female medical wards and outpatient clinic that have patients with DM were purposely selected for the study. Respondents who met the inclusion criteria for the study were drawn proportionately from the units using simple random sampling technique. Coping mechanism questionnaire was used for data collection. Data entry was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 22 while hypotheses testing was done using chi-square and Fisher’s exact test at statistically significant level of 0.05. Findings revealed a mean score for age of 58.3 years (±9.62). Coping mechanism of respondents received an average overall mean score of 3.18, above the average mean score of 2.5 indicating coping mechanism to DM among respondents to be highly adequate with respondents reported no perceived barriers to effective coping. This study pointed out the various coping strategies of patients with DM (Type 1 & 2). Specifically, gender, religion and marital status influences coping strategies in patients with DM with no reported barriers to their effective coping with the disease.