Talk about being dealt a difficult hand. Did you know that people with type 2 diabetes who experience symptoms of distress or depression are more likely to skip taking their diabetes medications than type 2 diabetics who do not experience such emotional anxiety? Well, that’s the skinny according to a recent study.
“Although it would seem intuitive to expect that depression would make the already difficult job of diabetes self-management that much harder, the available data have not been very clear,” lead author Jeffrey S. Gonzalez of Yeshiva University in New York attests.
It’s a bit like catch 22. Gonzalez, said that although it is necessary to treat depression even though is it is unlikely to be effective in improving treatment adherence and diabetes self-management. Well, talk about being trapped between a rock and a hard place!
“Diabetes-related distress reflects the emotional and psychological reactions to the burden and stress associated with diabetes and its management,” Gonzalez claims in the journal Diabetes Care.
Here’s the problem, physical symptoms of depression including poor sleep or appetite as well as waning energy can cause confusion leading some patients to blame their diabetes medications for their emotional stress, researchers claim.
To pinpoint the effects of distress and depression on whether diabetics take their medications, researchers followed 104 men and women with type 2 diabetes. The volunteers were interviewed by researchers about their diabetes-related emotional distress and depression and provided blood samples to assess how well managed their diabetes was.
Amongst the volunteers just over 46 percent of participants were categorized clinically significant diabetes distress, while another 21 percent were determined to have some depression symptoms. Five of the 104 volunteers were diagnosed with a severe depressive disorder.
Researchers monitored participants’ medication use via electronic bottle caps over the next three months. According to the bottle cap data, participants took their medication 76 percent of the time.
What is especially unnerving is that the study noted individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms tended to have fewer days on medication than others.
Although missing medication is not necessarily troublesome in the short-term, the negative consequences resulting not medicating can be long-term uncontrolled blood sugar levels that result in damage to the kidneys, feet, and nerves and an increased likelihood of a stroke.
When the researchers analyzed the relationship between depression and medication, they concluded that physical depression symptoms like poor sleep and daytime fatigue were key points that determined whether people took their meds or not.
“Living with and managing diabetes can often be a burden for patients and stressful circumstances can often trigger emotional distress and, sometimes, depression,” Gonzalez said.
So in order to overcome the dangers of neglecting to take your diabetes medications, Gonzalez suggests that linking medication doses to particular routines that occur regularly, like morning coffee, may be more effective than scheduling to take medication at a particular time of the day.
