Diabetes and depression

This past few days being on diabetes "medication" has been a humbling experience. I did not realize the upkeep involved, and even for someone with a half-decent understanding of nutrition, it was not a walk in the park. I screwed up so badly on Saturday that I wrote the day off to start anew on Sunday. That's the fortunate part of only pretending to have diabetes. People really living with the disease can't just decide to do it tomorrow, it is a burden you live with everyday.

There were a few times I forgot to take my "Metformin", and carbohydrate counting, though I did get better, was a tedious experience. I found myself estimating a couple times, which may have been sloppy, but I was either in a rush or just didn't feel like doing the extra work.

I was actually really surprised that I grew more tired of doing a finger prick, than the insulin shot. Pricking my finger is not fun! While the insulin shot gave me the most angst the first time, it was the finger prick that I truly despised in the end. I was able to give myself the insulin shot relatively quickly and with less mess, while pricking my finger gave me more pain, and a few times I had to repeat it as the glucometer read an error.

All these issues of managing diabetes add up, and this all just in a few days. Living with the condition would reveal even more issues that I'm sure would cause a lot of anxiety and frustration for people.

 Studies have shown that depression is twice as likely to occur in diabetics than non-diabetics. This is related to physical, psychological, and genetic factors. The burden of managing a chronic disease on your own, is thought to be a contributing factor to depression in people with diabetes. This highlights the need for a strong social support network, to ease the burden of the person living with diabetes.

While depression can lead to poor diabetes control. Depression has also been shown to double the risk of developing diabetes, so it is difficult to determine how depression develops. Certainly it is not hard to believe that a diagnosis of diabetes would exacerbate depression. Either way it is a vicious relationship.

Understanding the burden of chronic disease is crucial for the delivery of quality healthcare that respects the client. People may struggle with managing their illness, but it does not necessarily mean they are a lost cause, just that they need care to be tailored differently.