Diabetes Linked to Depression
During and After Pregnancy
During and After Pregnancy
Low-income women who have diabetes and are pregnant or recently just gave birth have twice the risk of depression compared to women who do not have diabetes. No matter if women develop diabetes before or during pregnancy the risk for depression was still much stronger for women with diabetes. Even women who have never been depressed are at risk. One study froudn that 1 in 10 women received diagnosis of depression within a year following delivery. Post-partum depression can also affect new mothers. About 10% of women between 2 to 6 months after birth are affected. One risk factor for post-partum depression is difficulty during pregnancy or delivery. A study of 11,000 women who had given birth between 2004 and 2006 and who were also enrolled in Medicaid found that: "15.2% of women with diabetes developed depression during or after their pregnancy. In women without diabetes, that number was 8.5%. In women who'd never been depressed before, 9.6% of those with diabetes developed depression, compared to 5.9% of those without diabetes."
I was unaware that diabetes was linked to depression during and after pregnancy. I think that it is interesting that this happens but it also makes a lot of sense. Low-income pregnant women could be dealing with a lot of stress issues which could lead to depression. Issues such as troubled relationships, domestic violence, stressful life events, financial problems, lack of social or emotional support, having a difficult pregnancy or delivery, and even health problems with the baby. These risk factors mentioned can lead to post-partum depression which in turn can affect new mothers. This article definitely presented us with compelling evidence that this topic is important. The statistics mentioned above prove that low-income women who have diabetes and are pregnant or recently just gave birth have twice the risk of depression compared to women who do not have diabetes! I definitely feel that this topic is important to address. This problem affects the public’s health significantly, especially low-income women.
Some of the strategies for addressing this problem were to provide women who are on Medicaid with better access to education about diabetes control and monitoring. In understanding how to deal with diabetes these women would be less stressed which would lead to a healthier pregnancy, thus resulting in less of a chance in developing depression during or after pregnancy. Another strategy mentioned was to provide lower-income women with support systems before the baby arrives. Setting up extra help for these women will also be important in decreasing their stress levels. Health-care facilities should also pay more attention for depression in women with diabetes during the post-partum period. This way both diabetes and post-partum depression can be cured during this time frame. Some questions that I might ask after reading this article are: How many of these women during the study had planned pregnancies? How many women with diabetes were newly diagnosed? Also, it would be interesting to do a study on higher-income women to see what stressors would trigger depression during or after pregnancy. Overall I think it is important for people to understand that health care disparities such as this are more frequent than we would like to think. It is important for us to realize that we need to address these issues so we can start proceeding in helping solve them by providing more support.