There is a critical need to understand the relationship between diabetes and mental illness. Diabetes and mental health problems share common risk lifestyle factors and are considered ‘comorbid’, meaning they often co-occur and interact. This can lead to a vicious cycle whereby the management of diabetes may make people feel at times anxious, down and depleted, which can in turn lead to more lifestyle behaviours that make the management of diabetes more challenging. Co-morbid mental illness and diabetes is associated with more severe harms and worse patient outcomes, is an important area of exploration as part of the metabolic health management in the future.
It is important to investigate the dynamic relationship between mental illness and diabetes across the lifespan. Working alongside with basys.ai will enable scholars to take advantage of over 300k patient records from the leading institution in diabetes treatment, and facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations with key opinion leaders in AI and medicine.
Ultimately, this collaboration will help develop customisable tools to support both patients and practitioners to better manage comorbid mental illness and diabetes.
Author: Dr Jennifer Debenham
Image credit: Total Shape
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