The idea of this thesis stemmed from the researcher's experience in dealing with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) patients during her clinical experience. Thus, with an immense interest in exploring the mind-body relationship in lifestyle diseases, the thought of various psychological aspects influencing the wellness of people battling T2DM emerged. The researcher was always fascinated with exploring how personality dimensions influence people's behaviour and lifestyle. Therefore, with the help of the supervisor and guidance from the Doctoral Committee, the researcher narrowed down the psychosocial aspects down to personality, gender and life stress. Currently, Type II diabetes is addressed as "Type 2 diabetes" or "T2DM". Therefore, in the following text and chapters, the researcher decided to use the term T2DM.
The current study focused on identifying the relevant variables that are related to depression in T2DM. The emotional issues in lifestyle disorders are topic for recent research in the field of health psychology. Among them, depression in diabetes has been extensively studied. Empirical studies establish a relationship between diabetes and depression. Review of the literature revealed many studies that focused on the relationship of various parameters of this population with depression. The researcher has selected personality, gender and life stress based on these empirical studies.
There are certain types of personalities with sensitivity to depression (Boyce & Mason, 1996). Life stress is the perception of an acute stressor (Naliboff et al., 2004). Gender is an easily identifiable social variable. The researcher attempted to study the relationship of these variables with depression in People with T2DM. The researcher decided to understand the significance of a bio psychosocial model in understanding depression in T2DM. The Diatheses Stress Model heavily inspired the current study.
In the following paragraphs, the researcher attempted to explain the parameters of the study and the relevant literature for each one. The first section of this chapter introduces Type 2 Diabetes mellitus by explaining the history, epidemiology, and risk factors, criteria for screening and diagnosis, and consequences of T2DM. The second section explains the history, types, causes and symptoms of depression. It also presents relevant literature on the relationship between depression and T2DM. The researcher has justified the use of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) in this current study with the help of empirical research studies. In the third section, the researcher has explained the concept of personality, which includes various theories of personality, history of personality assessment and type theories of personality. As this study utilises the Type A, B, C and D personality theories for identifying the participants with Type D personality, relevant literature of the measure used in the study has been provided. The fourth and fifth section of this chapter provides introduction, details, relationship with depression and literature of life stress and gender in T2DM respectively. The last section explains the rationale of the study, followed by the objectives identified and hypotheses formulated from the relevant literature.
