Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with T1D are at risk for elevated depressive symptoms. Health care providers (HCPs) are in a unique position to discuss mental health (MH) and T1D self-care during routine diabetes medical visits.

Objective: Evaluate the frequency and content of MH discussions during medical visits.

Methods: Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of AYA-HCP communication and T1D care. Secondary analyses include evaluation of 108 medical visits (M duration=22.5 min; n=8 HCPs) with 33 AYAs with T1D (48.5% male; 45.5% non-Hispanic White; M age=17.5±1.1 yrs; M clinic visits=3.27). 22 AYAs self-reported elevated depressive symptoms using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (M CES-D score=22.6±8.3); a matched sample of 11 AYAs without elevated depressive symptoms was selected for comparison (M CES-D score=5.7±3.9). Medical visits were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded by trained coders to identify and characterize MH discussions.

Results: Coding of transcripts identified 43/108 medical visits (39.8%) with ≥ 1 MH discussion. AYAs with elevated depressive symptoms were as likely to have a MH discussion (42.6%) as AYAs without elevated depressive symptoms (35.0%; p=.43); the elevated group had 2.48 distinct MH conversations/visit compared to 1.64 distinct MH conversations/visit for the non-elevated group (p=.10). MH discussions were initiated most often by HCPs (67.4%), followed by AYAs (23.3%) and parents (9.3%). MH resources were provided in 60.5% of all visits with MH discussion, including: referral for MH services (76.9%), general MH education (30.8%), and recommendation to continue current MH services (26.9%).

Discussion: MH content is commonly discussed in routine T1D care. Results suggest a need to increase HCP-delivered resources for AYAs with MH concerns. Evaluation of MH discussions can improve the quality of AYA-HCP communication around MH symptoms and, ultimately, improve diabetes care.

Disclosure

M. Monaghan: Research Support; Self; American Diabetes Association. C. Wong: None. D.L. Polyakov: None. M. Rose: None.

Funding

American Diabetes Association/Pathway to Stop Diabetes (1-18-ACE-27 to M.M.); National Institutes of Health (R03DK110259)

© 2020 by the American Diabetes Association
2020
Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered. More information is available at http://www.diabetesjournals.org/content/license.