Diabetes and stigma – “It can be quite exhausting”

An interview with Dr Mayank Patel, Consultant in Diabetes at University Hospital Southampton and member of the DRWF Editorial Advisory Board.

If you are living with diabetes, you may very well have experienced ignorant, condescending or simply rude comments, not only from the public and even family members, but also possibly professionals who we would hope know better. Stigma can manifest itself in many ways.

As part of a two-part feature for the DRWF Living with Diabetes podcast series we look at the question of stigma in diabetes, including interviews with people living with diabetes and healthcare professionals and the different perspectives they bring to the conversation.

Living with Diabetes: How does stigma impact people’s overall health and wellbeing?

Dr Patel: “From the perspective of diabetes stigma, having spoken to my own patients and having heard stories from yourself and other colleagues about the impact of receiving stigma type behaviour. It can be quite an exhausting business. People are already working very hard to live a life with diabetes, which involves lots of additional attention, and can be quite overwhelming and tiring for some.

“When you add to that other comments and behaviours delivered by others to these individuals living with diabetes, that can also be quite an additional drain and a strain to individuals which can impact mentally and physically on feeling judged and having some sort of value judgement put on them, which obviously is nothing that anybody should ever have to have, whether living with diabetes or not. It impacted on overall health and wellbeing, these behaviours around them, by others who are not in the know of what living a life with diabetes entails, which can be quite exhausting and get people down.”

People have said they feel they have to educate others about their diabetes. Can you explain how this happens?

Dr Patel: “It’s important that those living with diabetes can dig deep as much as possible. If they can do their level best to educate and inform, that can go a really long way. You have to appreciate that whilst these comments get made and they are unpleasant, I think often they are not made from a position of someone deliberately setting out to be unkind, it is genuine ignorance because of their perception of what diabetes means.  They may have seen it depicted badly on television or a movie or in a book or something, and they feel they can just lift that direct observation into the real world, which, as you know, is not correct.

“None of us, even without diabetes, should eat too many sugary foods. It is that sort of gentle, polite pushback, if you like, in an effort to educate and where people are called out for having to inject in public. Of course that should absolutely be challenged. And in the workplace, people’s employers and colleagues have got a lot to offer to help people live with diabetes.

“To have sensitive and understanding colleagues around and understand, that can really help a lot, I think.”

Is there still room for improvement for healthcare professionals in line with the Language Matters guidance?

Dr Patel: “I work every day with healthcare professionals who are not in the specialist diabetes management arena, and their perception of diabetes is still sadly lacking in certain areas. 

“They will often refer to people as diabetic rather than a person with diabetes. Or they refer to me as a diabetic doctor. I am a diabetes specialist doctor.

“It sounds minor, but if you hear this all the time, it’s quite tiring for everybody. 

“There is definitely room for improvement in healthcare professionals in how they broach diabetes. Having people just have that presence of mind to think differently is really important.”

Living with Diabetes

Listen to the interviews in full as part of the DRWF Living with Diabetes podcast series

This latest edition of our podcast Living with Diabetes was supported by Abbott.

Living with Diabetes is a Blue Aurora media production for DRWF. Copyright 2024 Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation. All rights reserved.

This article was produced as part of the DRWF Living with Diabetes podcast series and appeared in the Autumn 2024 edition of Diabetes Wellness News. To subscribe visit here