25 Comments
Have you ever seen a mental health provider with expertise in diabetes management?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
© 2023 T1D Exchange. All Rights Reserved.
I’ve seen the head of endocrinology for over 25 years and didn’t know such a specialist existed. I guess I didn’t need to know?
She was horrible. Said she understood what it was like to have diabetes because she has to wait behind others in the grocery store checkout and drive behind other cars on the beltline. Her advice to dealing with the stress was lunch and shopping with girlfriends. She’s now counseling cancer patients instead, probably with the same lack of empathy.
I have never but I support everyone who has. I have strong support from my husband and it is very important to not be alone with this disease if you can. I’m probably not even aware of how much it affects my mind. My heart goes out to anyone who has a chronic illness. Not easy living with it, but beats the alternative. Stay strong and well T1Ds.
I’m not sure he was an expert but he certainly had experience and knowledge working with peeps who had diabetes. One day a week he would be available to be seen in the Diabetes’s Care Clinic for those who needed that.
HAH!!! And where does an everyday PWD find such an expert???
As a RN, CDE I have heard a few (and that is very few) mental health experts speak about treating diabetes distress snd related psycho-emotional self-care issues at professional conferences. However rare, they are out there usually in bigger East Coast and West Coast locations. A reliable source is the Behavioral Diabetes Institute in San Diego headed up by PhD psychologists Dr Bill Polansky and Susan and Guzman. See http://www.behavioraldiabetes.org . They are affiliated with http://www.TCOYD.org and Drs. Edelman and Pettus have a lot to say about the ups and downs of dealing with T1D since they both live with it themselves.
Agh! Was unable to fix the typo “and” between Dr. Susan Guzman’s name.
Hi ConnieT1D62!
I totally agree that the BDI and Drs Edelman and Pettus are great resources! Thank you for putting the link in! 😀
When I was first diagnosed with LADA on insulin, I saw a mental health counselor. My husband was a juvenile T1D and I was concerned about the safety of our upcoming spring vacation car trip. After expressing my concerns, she had my husband return with me and we had a discussion about the fears I carried inside. Now I am a widow living alone and my saving grace has been the Abbott Freestyle Libre with a reader. ( The news this week has me terribly upset, and we all should be thinking of those americans, comerads, women, children and all those hostages in enemy territory. )
I have not seen a mental health advisor, but I’ve been going to a wonderful Endo and CDE for about 15 years now. The Endo is very supportive and offers great advice, and the CDE has had T1D for nearly as long as I have (58 years for me), so she knows the frustration and depression that can ensue from it. My husband is very supportive as well. The rest of my family is supportive, but not nearly as informed, or willing to be informed, as I would like. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
YES! I had undiagnosed depression when I was 11 (I mean… what 11-year old has anything to be sad about, right?!). My Mom wanted me to speak with a pro about my troubles and I said, “Sure, but it has to be a woman and she has to be a T1.” My Mom took on the impossible challenge (keep in mind this is pre-Google) and found a wonderful lady therapist with T1 in about a month. She specialized in marriage counseling, but offered me a 1-time session. That 1-time visit turned into years of sessions as she was the only person in my life that truly understood what my life entailed. She truly saved my life.
I saw a psychologist who understood diabetes very well with situational depression twice. Helps immensely and u think I am better for it. There are psychologists I know of in st. Louis who have expertise with diabetes.
Great story, Busted Pancreas, how amazing that your Mom found someone with the right “credentials” for young you!! I think there must be few mental health providers who have expertise in DM management, few outside of large specialty clinics like the Joslin Center.
But when searching, we could cast a bigger net to round up counselors with expertise in chronic disease management. And those professionals ought to advertise their availability better!
Yes, but a long, long time ago, in 1980. This was in one of the first home glucose monitoring programs.
I said no, but there have been times when I wished I had access to a mental health pro.
Honestly if I could find one that specifically worked with type 1 I would try it but specializing in diabetes usually means type 2 and a little bit of knowledge about type one… in my experience doctors (even when they say they understand the differences they don’t seem to know much about type 1.
I have not but with that said my father was a medical doctor, who initially diagnosed me with T1. He was my go-to resource for both medical issues as well as how to balance my life. For some things, he would say, go talk to your doctor. I had a great Eno but she recently retired.
I also have a friend who calls themselves a Chocolate therapist. Bring chocolate and tell me your troubles. It all helps. I don’t think I would trust someone who I’d have to pay to listen to me.
I wish I had access to one. There is none where I live as far as I know.
I also think that would be a tough person to locate.
Not a therapist with type1 expertise, but I have seen 3 therapists throughout my 61 years type 1 and each was an amazing person who helped me get beyond the current issue I was having at the time mentally dealing with having type 1. Actually the best therapy I ever had was having my son 36 years ago & daughter 32 years ago because they took my attention and filled my heart and brain and left little time to obsess about other things. I got my first meter 2 years before his birth and it was a life changer!
I have used one who specialized in diabetes AND was type 1 himself. We did our appointments on a video basis… don’t think it was Zoom, but something like that.
It was helpful. And, being that it was over video, I’m sure anyone (within a reasonable time zone variable) could use him…
Am I allowed to put his name here? I will if someone tells me I can… Because if there are people who are interested…
I can tell you, I think, that I found him through BDI (Behavioral Diabetes Institute)… this organization is in California, USA.
That’s a thing? I need to brush up on my psychology fields. Haven’t heard of this sub field for mental health.
My first endocrinologist had an excellent understanding of my teenage psychology. He helped me with the diabetes and my mental health. I’m also very appreciative of the non diabetic psychiatrists, and psychiatric social workers I’ve known both socially on a casual basis as well some I’ve paid to see when I was “stuck” in depression. And I’ve read many helpful articles & books: Freud, Menninger, Horney, Misildine (?), Albert Ellis, etc. I minored in psych in college. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Rational Emotive Therapy have books with suggested written exercises. Physical exercise, being in nature, meditation, yoga, support groups have all helped me cope. I think I’ve known only one counselor who was also T1D. Yes, he was helpful, but so have all the rest.
Based on the above response results it looks like less than 10% of us have sought psychoemotional support in this way. That seems pretty positive to me. However I have to bet a greater percentage of us have used counseling in general, perhaps not realizing that there are SOME indeterminate number which have expertise in the distinctly unique nature of the T1D management’s challenges – simultaneously hour-to-hour and over a lifetime. I hope T1Dexchange can use its resources (including this question) to build up a clinical consensus on the importance of building up this specific field as a resource for users and providers alike.
P.S. in my case, I pushed my endocrinologist to help me find a way to distinguish between the way I felt in that hour or more of a declining BG and the identical symptoms of chronic depressive episode. Before the existence of CGM, during my years of Hypoglycemia Unawareness (without even knowing that there was such a clinically recognized condition), and thinking that I had the longstanding depression reasonably under control, I had come to realize that these were two independent, but sometimes overlapping, symptoms. I’d found myself scrambling for a glucose tab or the like when it was better served (had I known) by some relaxation meditative calming & looking at “what really is” rather than “what we feel/think it is” – in the CBT cognitive behavioral model.
My endo sought among his big city med school multi-disciplinary resources and provided me some names. I briefly interviewed them and chose one and satisfactorily TREATED MY DEPRESSION sufficiently to remove the anxiety, confusion and thereby a good bit of the resulting dysfunctionality.
Reply to Bill Marston: Thanks for the good reply, bravo for the successful result of your search. I find the two conditions frequently interact… or coincide.
Only once, as required by the endocrinology office when I first started wearing a pump 20? years ago. But I have seen several CDE’s who have great interpersonal skills besides their training in the emotional aspects of T1D.