Depression in diabetes mellitus-A comprehensive systematic review of literature from an Indian perspective.

Diabetes and depression are rapidly growing chronic health conditions that have significant negative impact upon the physical, psychological, social and occupational functioning, quality of life and often leads to socio-economic burden. Presence of both these comorbid diseases results in various short term and long term complications and increases the mortality as compared to those with depression or diabetes alone.

OBJECTIVES: Systematic review of the epidemiological data, risk factors and relationship between depression and glycaemic control among the Indian studies.

METHODS: We searched Pubmed, Pubmed Central, Google Scholar and Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) databases to identify relevant Indian studies.

RESULTS: Substantial variation in the prevalence of depression in people with diabetes was found across the 41 selected studies; according to this review the range is 2% to 84% (T1DM - 2-7%; T2DM - 8%-84%). Correlates of depression in diabetic patients are advancing age, female gender, low literacy rate, burden of being from a lower socioeconomic status, rural domicile, marriage and duration of diabetes of >2years, diabetes related complications and poor glycaemic control. Sedentary life without adequate physical activities, lack of self-care are often the factors that precipitates depression in a T2DM patient and vice versa.

CONCLUSION: According to this review, among Indian population there is a significant association between depression and diabetes.