Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in an onset cohort of adults with type 1 diabetes.

Background: Previous studies indicate a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in adults with type 1 diabetes mellitus. The aim of our study was to determine if newly diagnosed adults with type 1 diabetes already have an elevated rate of psychiatric disorders at the beginning of their physical illness.
Methods: The authors consecutively recruited 313 newly diagnosed, adult inpatients with type 1 diabetes (age 17-40 years) from 12 hospitals. A national, representative population sample of 2046 persons of a similar age range served as the reference group. Psychiatric disorders were measured in both groups using structured interviews that provided diagnoses according to DSM-IV.
Results: There was a point prevalence of 12.5% for psychiatric disorders in the sample. The most frequent conditions were anxiety and affective disorders. Subjects with type 1 diabetes demonstrated a rate of major depressive episodes twice that of the reference group (5.8% vs 2.7%, p < 0.003; corrected for confounders). Apart from this finding, there was no significantly increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the diabetes sample as compared to the general German population.
Conclusion: The rate of major depressive episodes in the new onset cohort of type 1 diabetes patients was double that of the population as a whole. However, the hypothesis, that newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients have more psychiatric disorders than the general population, was not confirmed.
(Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)