Understanding the impact of gestational diabetes diagnosis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how gestational diabetes patients experience the impact of this diagnosis during pregnancy and what kind of significance they attribute to the disease. The methodology used was ethnography (Geertz 1989). The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and nine pregnant women were interviewed from April to August, 2003. These interviews were analyzed based on Bardin's theory of content analysis (1977), producing two thematic units: (1) facing the diagnosis of diabetes during pregnancy and (2) understanding the meaning of gestational diabetes. These women showed feelings such as fear, anxiety and depression, caused both by the aftermaths of the high-risk pregnancy and by their previous personal experiences with the diagnosis of gestational diabetes and previous family experiences with diabetes mellitus.The beliefs about gestational diabetes made it difficult for them to accept the diagnosis, either because it was not really understood as sickness, or, on the contrary, because it was perceived as a serious disease.