Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is both a metabolic and nutritional chronic non transmissible disease. After insulin was discovered in 1922, many scientific and technologic discoveries have generated innovations shown to control de disease and prevent its complications. But despite these scientific advances, uncontrolled diabetes is still a major cause of chronic complications and death worldwide.

As most diseases, diabetes mellitus can be explained through natural history, which implies inevitable complications and suffering and through a sociocultural history, in which diabetes is transmitted via social communication and inherited in family habits, feelings and paradigms.

Currently, the major connotations of de sociocultural history of diabetes reflect the lack of control of the disease. The negative feelings of discrimination and handicap are reflected in the stereotype “diabetic patient”.

We postulate that a change in the sociocultural history of diabetes will allow societies to apply scientific knowledge and change the way people with diabetes are treated and the results of the therapies. Stereotypes may change, through voluntary and conscious decisions. The first step to change the sociocultural history of diabetes is to stop the discrimination and handicap implied in the stereotypes that surround the disease and set a new paradigm of respect, participation and empowerment for people with diabetes.

Keywords: Diabetic Patient or Person with Diabetes; Diabetes and Discrimination; Diabetes and Paternalism; Diabetes and Co-Responsibility; Social Communication, Disabilities, Diabetes

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