Mental Health Update | Exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy can improve depression outcomes in adults with type 2 diabetes.
Exercise and/or behavioral treatment interventions may provide clinically meaningful improvements in depression outcomes in adults with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and major depressive disorder (MDD).
Mary de Groot, PhD, from Indiana University in Indianapolis, and colleagues randomly assigned adults with T2DM for at least one year with coexisting MDD to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; 10 sessions over 12 weeks; 36 patients), community-based exercise (EXER; 12 weeks including 6 sessions with a personal trainer; 34 patients), CBT+EXER (concurrent over a 12-week period; 34 patients), and usual care (UC; 36 patients).
The researchers note that participants were mainly female (77%), white (71%), and married (52%), with a mean age of 56.0 years. The odds of achieving full MDD remission in the intervention groups were 5.0 to 6.8 times greater than in the UC group after controlling for education and antidepressant use.
Compared with UC, the CBT+EXER group demonstrated improved hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). After controlling for other variables, among participants with a baseline HbA1c ≥7.0%, the CBT+EXER group had a 1.1% improvement in HbA1c.
“These interventions enable behavioral health counselors and exercise professionals to extend the availability of depression treatment options that are complementary to medical care for patients with T2DM to achieve improvements in outcomes for both disorders,” the authors write.