Is there a link between depression and diabetes?
Diabetes is a biological illness which affects the way that the body is able to use and digest food, and its broken up into two kinds; type 1 diabetes, which one is born with, and type 2, which one gets later in life. Depression on the other hand is a mental illness which affects the ones everyday life through mood. While both are very serious illness at first glance they seem to be unrelated to one another. However recent studies have shown that there is a correlation between diabetes and depression.
One such study, which took place at John Hopkins University school of Medicine studied this correlation, which they found went both ways. After analyzing the data of more than 6,000 people, both with and without type 2 diabetes, it was found that 42% of people who did not have diabetes but did show signs of depression would later develop type 2 diabetes within three years. Furthermore this research also suggest of the people with type 2 diabetes, there was a 54% greater chance that they would develop depressive symptoms over three years as opposed to someone without the diabetes diagnose.
As such it would seem that having diabetes puts a person at risk for developing depression. Researchers who conducted this study suggest that some explanations of this could be due to the stress involved in finding out that one is ill and having to deal with the daily task of taking care of this illness. However this research also suggests that if one is depressed they are also at risk for becoming diabetic. To this researchers claim that perhaps the strain which depression puts on one’s daily life would have an impact on that person’s health and cause them to act in unhealthy ways which could lead to depression. While both of these explanations are plausible this study does not give definite proof of either.
Furthermore this study fails to acknowledge the type 1 diabetes and whether there is a correlation between that subset of illness and depression. Perhaps there is more to the correlation then just the strain it can put on someone’s life, which is what both explanations suggest. Couldn’t be possible that there is a more underlying bio-chemical condition which makes a person more susceptible to both? Food for thought.
-Cassey
SOURCES
http://www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com/alerts/diabetes/diabetes-depression_5806-1.html
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression-and-diabetes/index.shtml#pub2
http://www.diabetes.org/living-with-diabetes/complications/mental-health/depression.html
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