Mental Health Issues, Diabetes Distress, and Type 1…..

What’s the Relationship? 

Type 1 Diabetes is a difficult and unique chronic illness, but it is more than just that. Research shows that it affects your mental health, and your mental health also affects your Type 1 management. Research has shown a connection between T1D and various emotional issues, such as a higher likelihood of depression and anxiety, which can be major psychological barriers to quality of life and diabetes management (Egede & Dismuke, 2011). The influential relationship between mental health, diabetes-specific emotional distress, and type 1 diabetes management is strong in research. This means there is a high likelihood of experiencing mental health issues and/or diabetes distress in adolescents and young adults with type 1 and parents/caregivers. In addition, if an individual with Type 1 diabetes is experiencing high diabetes-specific emotional distress and/or depression, research shows that managing type 1 diabetes will be very difficult and average blood sugar levels will increase (Powers et al., 2017). 

High diabetes distress and symptoms of depression often co-occur, meaning that if you are experiencing high amounts of distress from diabetes, you are more likely to be experiencing depression symptoms, and vice-versa. Anxiety is also common in adolescents with type 1, with one study showing that 32% of adolescents experience anxiety symptoms, and that anxiety negatively influenced their blood sugar control (Buchberger et al., 2016). Many studies have demonstrated a significant impact of type 1 management on a parent/caregiver’s level of stress. Parents of school-age children with T1D are more likely to experience significantly higher amounts of parent stress than comparison groups of parents of children without chronic illness (Carroll, 2019).