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Considering the patient’s transition from child to adolescent to adult and its psychological aspects in endocrinology and diabetology, it is necessary to recall the child’s psycho-affective development when he enters adolescence. Indeed, adolescence appears paradigmatic of the “child-adult” transition; it is a specific and decisive psychic process which allows the child to become an adult, that is to say autonomous and subject to his desire. In our paper, we study the resonance of a chronic disease in young people; type 1 diabetes is chosen.

© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel

Perhaps talking about the psychological aspects of patients monitored using endocrinology and diabetology who are embarking on the “child-adolescent-adult” transition principally means remembering that it is a matter of the psycho-emotional development of the child as they enter adolescence. We actually see adolescence as a paradigm of the child’s transition to adulthood, in so far as it is a required and necessary passage that the child has to go through to become an adult, i.e. independent and with their own free will. It also involves assessing what “being pubescent” means psychologically in order to consider a suitable multidisciplinary support for the young person. In fact, we now know indisputably that adolescence is a specific and decisive process in child development. All too frequently called a “crisis,” adolescence is as worrying for young people themselves as for their families. Here we must not think only of the negative signs of opposition and sometimes verbal abuse. The crisis should be understood as the end of a way of functioning that has become ineffective in the situations to be faced. The normal reference points disappear and simultaneously give way to the anxiety of loss and an active search for new foundations. After describing the psychological changes that drive the child’s development to adulthood, we will consider the resonance of the presence of a chronic illness in the young person by taking the example of type 1 diabetes.