Barriers to self-management of diabetes.

People with diabetes hold major responsibility for the day-to-day management of their chronic condition. The management that, amongst others, includes blood glucose monitoring, medication taking, diet and physical activity, aims at normalizing blood glucose levels. In many individuals, the level of glycaemia, however, frequently exceeds the recommendations. This observation, together with patients' and practitioners' reports, suggests that active self-management is suboptimal. Various reasons, both individual and environment related, contribute to the suboptimal concordance with treatment regimen. The aim of this review is to discuss some of the barriers to optimal diabetes self-management.