Depression: A Quiet Killer by Any Name
- Mark Peyrot, PHD
- Department of Sociology, Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland; and the School of Medicine, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Depression has long been recognized as an important aspect of having diabetes. Studies have found that the rate of depression among people with diabetes is two or more times that of people without chronic disease (1), the prevalence of depression in diabetes can be ≥40% (2), and depression in diabetes persists and/or recurs over time (3,4). Depression generally has been regarded as a consequence of diabetes due to the burden of the disease, including its unrelenting demands and increased rate of debilitating and potentially fatal complications.
Recently, increased attention has focused on depression as an etiological factor in its own right (5). A small number of studies have found that depression predicts the later occurrence of type 2 diabetes (6,7). These findings are consistent with research outside the field of diabetes, which has shown that depression predicts subsequent morbidity and mortality (8). The study by Black, Markides, and Ray (9) in this issue of Diabetes Care demonstrates a similar pattern among individuals with diabetes; depression is shown to be a risk factor for microvascular and macrovascular disease, disability, and mortality among people with diabetes. While this finding is not unexpected, it is worthwhile to confirm it rather than having to infer it from other studies in nondiabetic populations.
This study goes beyond …
