March 11, 2007
Mental Health
Question from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA:
My sister is diabetic and manic depressive. She was diagnosed with diabetes at age seven. She was in her mid-twenties when diagnosed with manic depression. We have been wondering if the two were linked in some way. I searched the Internet for an answer and found this site. After reading many of the same questions about moods and diabetes, don’t you think that there is a connection and that more research should be done to find out the answer? If there are this many questions about behavior and diabetes, maybe there is more of a connection between the two than research has shown. More research about behavior than moment to moment moods should be considered.
My sister has never taken great care of herself and seems to think that she can eat whatever she wants, drink soda all day long and counteract these things with the right amount of insulin. Since her sugars are so out of control, maybe that would explain her sleeping for days at a time and then going through stages of no sleep at all.
Answer:
There has been a large amount of data to show that diabetes is associated with depression. However, there are different types of depression and they cannot all be grouped in the same lot. Manic depression, or bipolar disease, is a specific type of depression/psychiatric disease. I am not sure this is clearly linked to diabetes. There is ongoing work to learn more about depression, mood disorders, psychiatric disease, and diabetes.
JTL
Additional comments from Dr. Jill Weissberg-Benchell:
I am not aware of any relationship between diabetes and bipolar disorder. Sleeping all of the time and then not sleeping at all are symptoms of bipolar disorder and not related to diabetes.
JWB
