Psychological Reactions Associated With Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Youth

Abstract

Glucose monitoring is prerequisite to all other diabetes self-care behaviors and helps patients to reduce their risk for diabetes-related complications due to elevated glycemia. Because of the amount of information available and the ability to deliver glucose results in real-time, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) has the ability to improve on self-monitoring blood glucose. However, epidemiologic data demonstrate slow uptake of CGM by patients, especially among youth. Several new diabetes therapies rely on CGM for feedback on patients’ glucose levels to optimize treatment (eg, the low-glucose suspend insulin pump) and there are new technologies currently in development that will also need this information to work (eg, the artificial pancreas). To help patients to realize the potential benefits of these new treatments, it is essential to explore patients’ psychological and behavioral reactions to CGM and then target device enhancements and/or the development of behavioral therapies to minimize negative reactions and to improve patients’ CGM adoption rates. Limited research is available examining the psychological and behavioral reactions of CGM use in youth exclusively, but there are more studies examining these reactions in mixed samples of youth, parents, and adults. The purpose of this review is to summarize the available literature examining psychological and behavioral reactions to CGM use in young people with diabetes and to highlight how the results of past and future studies can inform device updates and/or behavioral intervention development to minimize barriers.