Adolescents with type 1 diabetes who have a lot of symptoms of depression have a high likelihood of being hospitalized for diabetes-related complications, researchers report.

Moreover, it’s important for parents of children with diabetes “to know that these teens are more likely than kids without diabetes to become depressed,” said Dr. Sunita M. Stewart.

It is also important “that they educate themselves about the signs and symptoms of depression,” she added.

Stewart, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues asked 231 teens with type 1 diabetes to complete a standard depression assessment scale. Over the next two years, the investigators assessed how well the participants kept their blood sugar levels under control, and recorded hospitalizations for medical complications that occurred.

Overall, 26 subjects (11 percent of the total group) were hospitalized at least once, the team reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

After factoring in gender, age at onset, socioeconomic status, and blood glucose levels, subjects classified as having depression at the beginning of the study were more than twice as likely as those with lower depression scores to be hospitalized before the end of the study period.

Thus, Stewart advised, “Teens with depression should be referred for mental health treatment.”

She added, “We know a lot about helping teens with depression, and in the case of these children, it is important both for their mental health and for their physical health that we do so.”

SOURCE: Pediatrics, May 2005.