Depression and Quality of Life among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in the Coastal City of Mangalore, India

Background: The global prevalence of this disease is on a steady rise. India has the second highest prevalence of diabetes in the world with 65.1 million people having diabetes and is estimated to be 109.0 million by the year 2035. Diabetics are also at a two-fold increased risk for depression. Methodology: A facility based cross-sectional study was conducted over a period of 2 months at out-patient department (OPD) of Government Wenlock Hospital (GWH). 245 type 2 DM patients with duration of illness of at least one year were included in the study. The PHQ-9 is the depression module, which scores each of the 9 DSM-IV criteria as “0” (not at all) to “3” (nearly daily) for the purpose of determining depressive symptoms and the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire for the purpose of assessing quality of life among diabetic patients was used. The collected data was then entered into MS-Excel sheets and analyzed using SPSS Version 15.0 Results: The study included 243 patients of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Mean values were found to be highest for social relationships (60.29) and lowest for physical health (48.17). After analysis of depressive symptoms it was seen that 129 (53.1%) participants had depression while the rest 114 (46.9%) were free of depressive symptoms. Conclusion: The study has shown high prevalence of depression among type2 diabetes patients in the study area. Moreover, the quality of life among the study subjects with depression is also seen to be poorer compared to those without depression.