Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between cognitive impairment and depressive mood in Thai elderly with type 2 diabetes at primary care centres.
Materials and methods: Two-hundred and eighty three (283) older people with type 2 diabetes were enrolled in this study. Mini-Cog and mini-mental state examination (MMSE) Thai 2002 were used to measure cognitive impairment while Thai geriatric screening test (TGDS) was used to measure depressive mood in all participants. Spearmen correlation was applied to determine the relationship between cognitive function and depressive mood.
Results: There was a positive relationship between cognitive impairment and depressive mood in older people with type 2 diabetes. The scores from Mini-Cog and MMSE Thai 2002 were negatively correlated with TGDS scores while adjusting for the effects of age and years of education with rs = -0.1, p = 0.06 and rs = -0.2, p<0.01, respectively. Although it showed an inverse relationship of the scores between cognitive and depressive mood screening tests, the results between the tests were positive when interpreting the test scores. It means that the higher score in Mini-Cog and MMSE Thai 2002 (non-cognitive impairment) were associated with the lower score in TGDS (non-depressed mood).
Conclusion: The finding of this study showed that older people with type 2 diabetes who had cognitive impairment seemed to have depressive mood. Hence, these two co-morbidities should be considered in order to give an optimal care to older people with diabetes.
Keywords: Cognitive impairment; depressive mood; type 2 diabetes.