Mental Health Clinician
Authors: M. Thomas Bateman, Caitlin, McCarthy, Katherine M. Prioli, Mary L.Wagner
https://doi.org/10.9740/mhc.2023.02.018
Abstract
Diabetes and depression may present concurrently, and clinical pharmacists are well equipped to manage these conditions. Clinical pharmacists were grant funded to implement a diabetes-focused randomized controlled trial in a Federally Qualified Health Center. The objective of this analysis is to evaluate if glycemic control and depressive symptoms improve for patients with diabetes and depression with additional management from clinical pharmacists compared with those receiving the standard of care.
This is a post hoc subgroup analysis of a diabetes-focused randomized controlled trial. Pharmacists enrolled patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and a glycated hemoglobin (A1C) greater than 8% and randomly assigned them to 1 of 2 cohorts, one managed by the primary care provider alone and one with additional care from the pharmacist. Pharmacists completed encounters with patients who have T2DM with or without depression to comprehensively optimize pharmacotherapy while tracking glycemic and depressive outcomes throughout the study.
A1C improved from baseline to 6 months in patients with depressive symptoms who received additional care from pharmacists by −2.4 percentage points (SD, 2.41) compared with a −0.1 percentage point (SD, 1.78) reduction in the control arm (P .0081), and there was no change in depressive symptoms.
