The impact of diabetes on psychological well being and quality of life. The role of patient education

People with diabetes live in a society that does not understand their condition. The overall perception that people with serious diabetes inject insulin and that Type 2 diabetes is relatively mild remains rife within the general population and even with some health care professionals. To make the situation worse, only few people understand that diabetes is a condition that cannot be simply controlled by medications and that the presence of diabetes markedly alters the lives of individuals and their families. Consequently, in this article we will be reviewing the scientific evidence of the effects of impaired psychological well being and poor perception of life quality on patients with diabetes. We will be enlightening the importance of patient education and self-empowerment on this aspect of management, which is crucial for the improvement in the physical, psychological and social well being of every patient suffering from this disease.     

Parent–infant co‐sleeping: fathers' roles and perspectives

Dyadic co‐sleeping (mother–baby) is a common strategy for night‐time infant care in the majority of world cultures. Triadic co‐sleeping (mother–father–baby) is less common, although still widely practised cross‐culturally. This paper examines triadic co‐sleeping in an opportunistic sample of parents from the North Tees region of England, and explores fathers' expectations and experiences of sleeping with their babies. Using a prospective study design, 36 sets of parents, pre‐ and post‐natally, were interviewed about infant care strategies, particularly at night. Although they did not anticipate sleeping with their infants at the pre‐natal interview, the majority of fathers (81%) had done so by the time of the second interview. First‐time fathers were afraid that they would squash or suffocate the baby in their sleep, and some were concerned that the infant's presence would adversely affect their own sleep. Fathers used a variety of strategies to help overcome their initial fears of co‐sleeping. Among those for whom triadic co‐sleeping became a regular night‐time infant care strategy, the pleasures of prolonged intimate contact with their infant were clearly apparent. It is suggested that the experience of sleeping with their infant ameliorates some of the distancing effects felt by fathers outside the breast‐feeding relationship, and helps encourage paternal involvement in night‐time infant care‐giving. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Working model of the child interview”: Infant clinical status related to maternal perceptions

Parental perceptions and subjective experience of infants have long been considered important in clinical work with infants and families. Using three different samples of infants, we compare mothers' representations of their infants in clinically referred and nonreferred groups, using the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI). Twenty-four mothers of infants with failure to thrive (and 25 matched controls), 17 mothers of toddlers with sleep disorders (and 20 matched controls), and 13 mothers of infants seen in a general infant psychiatry clinic participated. Compared to their nonclinical counterparts, mothers of infants with clinical problems had representations of their infants that were significantly more likely to be classified distorted or disengaged. Infant gender, age, and birth order were independent of maternal classifications. We conclude that the WMCI is a useful structured interview to categorize mothers' perceptions and subjective experience of their infant and relationship with the infant. Mothers' WMCI classifications are associated with the clinical status of the infant. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

User modeling via stereotypes

This paper addresses the problems that must be considered if computers are going to treat their users as individuals with distinct personalities, goals, and so forth. It first outlines the issues, and then proposes stereotypes as a useful mechanism for building models of individual users on the basis of a small amount of information about them. In order to build user models quickly, a large amount of uncertain knowledge must be incorporated into the models. The issue of how to resolve the conflicts; hot will arise along such inferences is discussed. A system, Grundy, is described that builds models of its users, with the aid of stereotypes, and then exploits those models to guide it in its task, suggesting novels that people may find interesting. If stereotypes are to be useful to Grundy, they must accurately characterize the users of the system. Some techniques to modify stereotypes on the basis of experience are discussed. An analysis of Grundy's performance shows that its user models are effective in guiding its performance.