Mental illness notes for unit 26

Sam’s presenting issues would be the type 1 diabetes diagnosis. This has clearly stopped him from
doing a lot of things, such as sports, in fear of his blood sugar dropping too low. He is spending a lot
of time indoors researching diabetes meaning that he is frightening himself. He is worried that the
diabetes will progress into something much worse.
The precipitating factors that triggered the presenting issues would be the fact that he has read
several things online where there were horror stories where people lost their eyes as a result of
diabetes. After reading these, he feels that he will also be affected in the same way.
The perpetuating factors are that he does not socialise as much and stays in his room researching
the illness rather than listening to what the doctors say. He is not as active as he used to be and
because of this, his fear of this diabetes will remain. He is researching the worst case scenarios which
gives himself a bad interpretation of the illness.
The predisposing factors are that he is still researching the bad things which made him much more
vulnerable as he began to isolate himself.