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Diabetes Monitoring - More Likely to Cause Depression

Studies have shown that if you have Type 2 diabetes and do not use insulin, then monitoring your own blood sugar levels is more likely to give you depression than provide any long-term health benefits.

Also see story on diabetes and antidepressants.

It is known that self-monitoring is beneficial for patients who have Type 1 diabetes and those with Type 2 diabetes who use insulin to treat their condition.

However, the majority of people with Type 2 diabetes do not use insulin, and there has been debate over the effectiveness of self-monitoring for this group of people.

In one study, Dr Maurice O’Kane  from the University of Ulster conducted a randomised controlled trial to determine whether self-monitoring has an effect on blood glucose levels and the incidence of hypoglycaemia in people with newly diagnosed type2 diabetes. They found no significant effect of self-monitoring on blood sugar levels or cases of hypoglycaemia after a year. In fact, the patients in the self-monitoring group reported higher levels of depression and anxiety.

Evidence suggests that some patients find self-monitoring ‘uncomfortable, intrusive and unpleasant’.  According to researchers, the negative feelings reported in the study might be due to the enforced discipline of regular monitoring without any obvious benefit, rather than due to ‘feelings of powerlessness in the face of high blood glucose readings.’

They concluded, in patients with newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes self monitoring of blood glucose concentration has no effect on glycaemic control but is associated with higher scores on depression.

In the second study, Dr Judit Simon and colleagues from the University of Oxford, used data from the diabetes glycaemic education and monitoring (DiGEM) trial to analyse the cost-effectiveness of helping patients with non-insulin treated type 2 diabetes self monitor their blood glucose levels in addition to standardised usual care.

They found that self-monitoring of blood glucose is significantly more expensive than the standardised usual care.

In addition, people who self monitored reported a lower quality of life probably owing to significant increases in their levels of anxiety and depression.

The researchers concluded that self-monitoring in addition to standardised usual care is unlikely to provide this group of patients with significant lifetime health benefits or be cost effective.

"This study therefore provides no convincing evidence for routinely recommending self monitoring to patients with non-insulin treated type 2 diabetes," BMJ quoted the researchers, as saying.

Do you feel that self-monitoring has a benefit or is it a necessary evil?  Did you become depressed after you began self-monitoring?  Leave a Comment below - we’d love to hear your story