Psychological impacts from expectation of worsening conditions and obstacles to life planning are affected by glycemic control, self-reported symptoms, and drug therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

INTRODUCTION/AIMS: It is important to reduce psychological stresses for glycemic control in diabetes. We investigated the factors affecting psychological impact, which was involved in the disease conditions in 378 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Patients' self-assessed symptoms and four subscales of psychological impacts on diabetes - impact from diabetes (S1), anxiety from having a chronic disease (S2), expectation of worsening conditions (S3) and obstacles to life planning (S4) - were analyzed.

RESULTS

Significant odds ratios (ORs) were found for sex and age in S1, age and glycemic control in S2, glycemic control in S3, disease duration and glycemic control in S4, and number of symptoms in S1-S4. Scores of S1 and S2 in women were lower than those in men, and decreased age-dependently. Significant ORs for the number of symptoms in S3 and S4 were greater than in S1 and S2. ORs increased markedly for patients under oral hypoglycemic agent therapy in S4 and insulin therapy in S1-S4 when compared with ORs for lifestyle therapy alone.

CONCLUSIONS

The psychological impact of type 2 diabetes involved a priori factors dependent on sex and aging in the subscales of current anxieties and impact, and a posteriori factors, such as disease duration, glycemic control and treatment methods, in the subscales of expectation of worsening conditions and obstacles to life planning.