Increasing Adherence to the Diabetes Regimen: An Occupational Therapy Perspective

Abstract

Recognizing the epidemic of diabetes in the United States, the Centers for Disease
Control projected that as many as one third of the population will have diabetes by 2050,
without a concerted effort to change the lifestyles and habits of people diagnosed with diabetes.
1 Further, the World Health Organization (2014) announced that diabetes had become a
global epidemic.
Occupational therapy has been described as a rehabilitation profession that helps a
person with disease to improve their ability to function in everyday life activities or to adapt
to their environmental demands, in order to continue to function to the best of their abilities.2
The majority of occupational therapists in the United States have focused their interventions
and research studies on development of the most effective ways to treat the tertiary complications
of the disease such as: peripheral neuropathy, retinopathy, cardiac disease, cerebral
vascular accident, and amputation. The consequences of poorly controlled or uncontrolled
diabetes have devastated the health of people with diabetes by providing them with shorter
life spans, poor quality of life, further disability, and increased morbidity.