Depression in the Diabetic Patient

Abstract

Depression is a common emotional state in humans, which is sometimes triggered by stressful events and certain physical and/or mental conditions that may occur and may increase the body's vulnerability to various types of depressive disorders, causing sometimes organic changes difficult to quantify and to treat. Depressive conditions are major clinical problems that occur throughout life and often require a specialized treatment, but the use of the antidepressant compounds is often endangered by the risk of formidable side effects, requiring to stop the treatment or to use medicine doses that cannot determine the desired therapeutic results. These are reasons for the impressive expansion of the research on the depression types, with emphasize on etiological and etiopathogenetical studies, allowing the discovery of compounds with good therapeutic potential and an appropriate pharmacological profile to reduce the side effects. Diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is a major public health problem, with increasing costs and frequency in recent years. Late diagnosis, inadequate treatment, lack of ongoing monitoring or ignorance of the disease can have serious consequences for the health of that individual, his family and his community. The mental state of a patient with diabetes is different from one moment to the next and varies with the stage of the disease and the appearance of various complications. The stress of chronic illness, the pressure to have a lifestyle and a diet according to medical recommendations, sadness, anger and even denial of the disease, are feelings experienced by patients with diabetes at least once in their lives.