Relationship between social support and depression in diabetic patients

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a group of metabolic disorders which cause hyperglycemia. Like any other chronic disease, DM has physical and psychological adverse effects. One of its most important psychological effects is depression which involves considerable percent of these patients. Considering high prevalence of DM and its related depression, we designed a research to evaluate relation between social support and rate of depression in diabetic patients.Subjects and In this survey, 100 cooperative diabetic patients (50 women and 50 men) were studied. The patients were admitted in Golestan Hospital from Sep 2006 to March 2007. Data-gathering was accomplished by a questionnaire and social support and depression rate were assessed using Bek questionnaire. Finally, data were analyzed by SPSS software. Correlation coefficient between results of social supports and depression tests was -0.54. These variants were significant and in inverse relationship. Relationship between social support and depression in male and female diabetic patients were significant and were inversely related. Prevalence of depression was 58.8% in men and 76.2% in women which has not significant differences (P=0.057). ‍ According to our study, there is an inverse relationship between social support and rate of depression in diabetic patients. No gender differences were found. Psychological aspects of DM and importance of social supports in treatment of depression related to DM must be considered.