Psychosomatic complaints profile in patients with type 2 diabetes: a matched case-control study

Abstract

Objective: To compare the prevalence of psychosomatic symptoms and their mean scores of profiles in diabetic patients and sample of sex-age-matched healthy controls. Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 87 patients with type 2 diabetes. The control group consisted of 259 age- and gender-matched healthy participants. Psychosomatic symptoms were assessed using a comprehensive 31-item questionnaire, and psychological problems were evaluated by 12-item General Health Questionnaire and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Factor analysis, independent Student’s t test, analysis of variance, and chi-square test were used for analyzing of data. Results: The frequency of 18 psychosomatic symptoms was significantly higher in diabetic patients with psychological problems compared with controls (P < 0.05), and the most frequent were “severe fatigue” (54.3%), “feeling low on energy” (48.6%), “disturbing thoughts” (45.7%), “pain in the joints” (34.3%), and “eyesore” (32.4%). There were significant differences in terms of “psycho-fatigue” (P ≤ 0.0001), “gastrointestinal” (P = 0.018), “neuro-skeletal” (P = 0.001), and “pharyngeal-respiratory” (P = 0.009) profiles between studied groups. Conclusions: In conclusion, diabetic patients with psychological problems had a higher frequency of psychosomatic symptoms and also higher scores of psychosomatic disorder profiles than control participants. However, further prospective investigations are required to assess whether the psychosomatic disorder/symptom pattern was caused by conditions of diabetes disease.