At last, a certified diabetes educator
that is willing to talk about depression. Although I am not sure I
completely agree with everything she says, at least she has opened a
dialog. Where it will go from here remains to be seen. Will the
American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) make it a topic of
interest? This could be interesting if they would.
I am admittedly tired of explaining to
other people with diabetes why CDEs seem to close out sessions with
diabetes patients when the word depression is mentioned or when CDEs
are asked for help. The instance, what I talked about in a previous blog
seems to hold true time after time. It is like most CDEs are afraid
to talk about depression and don't want to be around people with any
level of depression.
Talking about depression and obtaining
help for people with depression is becoming more difficult as many
programs are being cut by lack of funding and qualified people to
handle depression. In my state, mental health facilities are less
than one quarter of what they were 15 years ago and finding doctors
willing to refer you to professionals capable of assisting people
with depression is almost non-existent. Those that do have a
practice are so busy they do not have time for new patients.
Most medical providers today just
attempt to help by prescribing antidepressants for a period of time.
Even with all the discussion about mental health care because of
school shootings and obtaining guns has not been looked on with favor
because there just is not provisions to handle this potential influx
of patients. Most of the governors in the surrounding states have
stated that this would be ideal, but with the lack of facilities and
professionals to handle this, it is unrealistic to support mental
health care for persons needing this.
That is the main reason for my surprise
that a CDE would even blog about depression since her colleagues seem
to walk – no, run away from people even mentioning the word
depression. Clearly they lack the training to deal with depression.
What stops them from talking to the patient's doctor about this still
has me puzzled as this seems the least they should to do to assist
the patient.
This behavior by CDEs says they don't know how to assess diabetes patients for depression and are not
interested in helping people with depression. I can only hope that
the dialog opened by one CDE does not die for fear of having to deal
with diabetes patients and depression.
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