Psychiatric Disorders in Newly Diagnosed Diabetics in Outpatient Diabetes Clinics in Damietta in Egypt

Background: Previous studies indicated a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in adults with diabetes mellitus. The aim of the study was to determine if newly diagnosed adults with diabetes had already an elevated rate of psychiatric disorders at the beginning of their physical illness. Method: Two hundred adult outpatients with diabetes were consecutively recruited from diabetes clinic in Al Azhar University hospital in Damietta. A representative population sample of 100 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 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. Conclusion: The rate of major depressive episodes in the new onset cohort of diabetes patients was double that of the population as a whole. However, the hypothesis, that newly diagnosed diabetes patients have more psychiatric disorders than the general population, was not confirmed.