Abstract
Current research regarding insulin dependent diabetes and its relationship with depression lacks answers. Creating a greater understanding of the processes behind diabetes and comorbid depression is imperative to pushing researchers towards more telling results. Finding a correlation between insulin dependent diabetes and depression is a notion that has eluded researchers for centuries. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2007-2008, investigated by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Health Statistics, provides sufficient data for testing correlations between the two conditions. By combining answers to depression and diabetes related questionnaires, datasets can be analyzed in the hopes of finding relationships. The resulting correlation was that insulin dependent diabetics are significantly more depressed than nondiabetic controls, and that there is a significant correlation between poverty ratio and depressive composite scores. Current research suggests the need to continue searching for a correlation that can be addressed other than being diagnosed with diabetes (a chronic illness), as well as continuing to search for more effective ways to treat and potentially cure both diabetes and depression.