Trajectories of depressive symptoms in Korean adults with diabetes: Individual differences and associations with life satisfaction and mortality.

Objective: We examined trajectories of depressive symptoms and their predictors in adults with diabetes. We assessed whether these trajectories were related to life satisfaction and mortality.

Design: Longitudinal, prospective observational study.

Methods: We analysed data from 1217 adults with diabetes (aged ≥45 years) in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2006-2018).

Results: Three trajectories of depressive symptomology were identified in growth mixture models: low/stable (i.e., low and stable levels of symptoms; 85.56%), high/decreasing (i.e., high levels of symptoms with a decreasing trajectory; 7.47%), and moderate/increasing (i.e., moderate levels of symptoms with an increasing trajectory; 6.98%). Participants with poor perceived health status at baseline were more likely to be in the moderate/increasing or high/decreasing classes than in the low/stable class. The moderate/increasing class had the lowest satisfaction with quality of life, followed by the high/decreasing and low/stable classes. The moderate/increasing and the high/decreasing classes had lower satisfaction with relationships with spouse and children than the low/stable class. The high/decreasing class had a higher mortality risk than the low/stable class.

Conclusions: Long-term monitoring of depressive symptoms in adults with diabetes is warranted given their potential adverse impact on life satisfaction and mortality.