The effect of COVID-19 fear on treatment compliance and health seeking behavior in individuals with type 2 diabetes

This research is a descriptive and cross-sectional study to determine the effect of fear of COVID19 on treatment compliance and health-seeking behavior of individuals with type 2 diabetes during the pandemic process. The sample of the study consisted of 150 patients who applied to Mersin City Training and Research Hospital endocrine polyclinics between 04 July 2022 and 30 September 2022 for treatment and follow-up and met the inclusion criteria of the study. The data of the study were collected using the "Personal Information Form", "COVID-19 Fear Scale", "Patient Adherence to Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Treatment Scale" and "Health Seeking Behavior Scale". The data of the study were evaluated with Student's t test statistic, One Way ANOVA and Multiple Linear Regression analysis. 54.7% of the patients participating in the study were female, most of them were 50 years old and over, married, unemployed, and the mean age was 62.9±11.9. It was determined that 53.3% of the patients had type 2 diabetes for 10 or more years, nearly half of them had an HbA1c level of 8.1 and above, most of them used insulin, and 80.7% of them developed diabetes-related complications. In addition, it was determined that the majority of them had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 before and were not hospitalized due to COVID-19. It was found that the patients participating in the study had a moderate level of compliance with diabetes treatment, the lowest compliance with lifestyle changes, and the highest compliance with the dimension of emotions and behaviors suitable for adaptation. In the single analysis, it was found that the patients whose income is less than their expenses, who do not comply with medical nutrition therapy, who use insulin and who develop diabetes-related complications have lower adherence to diabetes treatment (p<0.05), while in the multiple regression analysis, those who only use insulin and those who do not comply with medical nutrition therapy have lower compliance with diabetes treatment. (p<0.05). In addition, it was found that health-seeking behavior scores of those with a university or higher education level, and the mean of fear of COVID-19 in female patients were higher (p<0.05). In this study, it was found that fear of COVID19 did not affect adherence to diabetes treatment (p>0.05). However, it was found that fear of COVID-19 had an effect on health-seeking behavior (p<0.05), and a 1-point increase in the COVID19 Fear Scale score resulted in a 1.23-fold increase in the Health Seeking Behavior Scale total score