Heart attack, stroke, nerve damage. These are just some of the complications for which millions of Americans with diabetes are at greater risk. When a person has any of these chronic diabetes complications, they are more likely to have a mental health disorder, and vice versa, according to a University of Michigan-led study.
That is, the relationship goes both ways: having a mental health condition also increases the risk of developing chronic complications of diabetes. We wanted to see if chronic diabetes complications led to mental health disorders or if mental health disorders led to those diabetes complications – but we found that both relationships are true." Brian Callaghan, M.
D., M.S.
, senior author and the Eva L. Feldman, M.D.
, Ph.D., Professor of Neurology at U-M Medical School "The findings highlight a need for clinicians to actively screen for mental health disorders in patients with diabetes in addition to screening for chronic complications, which is the recommended standard of care in diabetes.
" Three-times greater risk The research team, led by Michigan Medicine and the Department of Biostatistics at the U-M School of Public Health, examined insurance claims data from over 500,000 individuals with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and 350,000 people without diabetes. Results published in Diabetes Care reveal that people with chronic diabetes complications had up to a three-times greater risk of having a mental health condition, such as anxiety or depression. This eff.