The Leventhal et al. (2001) model of illness
representation is a useful way to conceptualize
how individuals perceive their own diabetes and
the diabetes of a family member. Illness repre-
sentation,which is part of self-regulation theory, is
a cognitive schema of one’s illness consisting of:
(a) identity (i.e., symptoms and labels to define
the illness); (b) timeline (i.e., beliefs regarding
development and duration of disease and symp-
toms coming and going in phases); (c) causes
of threat (e.g., heredity, diet, or poor healthcare);
(d) anticipated or experienced consequences
(e.g., causing difficulty for those around them, or
financial burden); and (e) controllability and
treatment of illness (i.e., extent to which the
illness can be controlled by personal behavior or
by treatment effectiveness). The most prominent
illness representations are controllability and
consequences. Thus, only these perceptions
were examined. In addition, we expanded the
consequences construct to include perceptions of
stigma with respect to diabetes.