The International Diabetes Association recently published a 2012 listing for diabetes rates by country which read like a Who’s Who of Arabian Gulf states. The prevalence rates of Kuwait (23.9%), Saudi Arabia (23.4%), Qatar (23.3%), and Bahrain (22.4%) put them in the top ten, and the reason for this may be due to a lack of attention paid, and provision made for the psychological wellbeing of people who suffer with diabetes.
Anxiety, for one, is a common psychological disorder that affects the wellness of diabetics. According to Diabetes UK, people with diabetes are 20% more likely to experience an anxiety disorder than people without the disease, due to fears of experiencing hypoglycaemia-related complications while working or even, God forbid, while driving. Further, these complications, including seizures and a loss of consciousness, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which requires early intervention to keep it from getting worse.
Often, when anxiety occurs, depression isn’t far behind. 15% of diabetics also experience a major depressive disorder, says the Canadian Diabetes Association, which is almost double the rate of otherwise healthy adults. If you were told that you have a life-altering, potentially fatal illness, wouldn’t you, like most people, be upset by the news? Add to that the fact that you now have to take extra-special care of your wellbeing on a daily basis, and it’s a wonder that the rate of diabetic depression isn’t even higher!
Not only does this mean that a person with diabetes can suffer with both the physical and mental damage of the disease, but studies have shown, time and time again, that those symptoms are not a good influence on one another. Depressed diabetics are more likely to have poorer clinical outcomes, in terms of rate of amputation and mortality. Depression exacerbates diabetes, which, in turn, makes you more depressed because things seem to be getting worse.
So what can be done about it? The bottom line is that treating depression and anxiety in people with diabetes would help them to clinically manage their disease, and improve their outcome. However, though this is a well-documented fact, physical health and psychological health specialists often don’t talk, and may not even work in the same health care facility. Yet more needs to be done to remove the stigma of psychological interventions, and doctors should also offer holistic treatment, including talk-based psychotherapies, particularly in cases involving depression.
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Do We Pay Enough Attention to Mental Health of Diabetics?
