Some patients react very negatively to the introduction of self-injection with insulin into their treatment. This may be due to the fact that patients are not aware of the specific details of self-injection. Patients using oral hypoglycemic agents and those undergoing dietary and exercise therapy, and healthy persons with no history of diabetes mellitus were asked to answer 11 questions concerning their image of self-injection, before and after they were given information on pen-shaped injectors and other information concerning self-injection with insulin. From the responses, we investigated changes in their attitudes toward self-injection due to the information they were given. A factor analysis of the responses revealed that there were two major factors in the resistance to self-injection : a feeling that self-injection was troublesome and the social discomfort of injecting. These results suggest that provision of specific information prior to the introduction of self-injection insulin would be useful in reducing resistance towards it.
