Mediating Role of Depression Between Diabetes Management Self-Efficacy and Diabetes Self-Care Behavior Among Elderly Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in China

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the current status of diabetes self-care behavior and the association between depression, self-efficacy and self-care in a sample of Chinese elderly type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. METHODS: A cross-sectional study with a convenient sample including 240 elderly T2DM patients collected the data of demographic characteristics, diabetes self-care behavior, self-efficacy and depression status. The difference of self-care behavior in different sample characteristics was compared by independent t-test. The Personal correlation analysis was employed to examine the correlation of study variables. The method of bootstrap was used to analyze mediating role of depression. RESULTS: Only 22.5% of patients reported better diabetes self-care behavior and depression partly mediated the association between self-efficacy and self-care behavior. The significant coefficient of path a (B = −0.052, p < 0.001) and path b (B = −0.423, p < 0.05) indicated negative associations of self-efficacy on depression, and depression on self-care behavior. The indirect effect (Path a × b) between self-efficacy and self-care behavior through depression was significant (B = 0.022, p < 0.05), the 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval was 0.004 to 0.006. Meanwhile, the mediating role of depression was not found significant among the participants reported 60–74 years old (B = 0.104, p < 0.001). But depression completely mediated this association among the participants reported 75–89 years old (B = 0.034, p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The level of diabetes self-care behavior among the elderly T2DM patients in Dahu community of Anqing city was hardly optimistic. The self-efficacy focused intervention could be encouraged for community and clinicians to improve diabetes self-care behavior. Moreover, the prevalence of depression and T2DM is increasing in younger population. More work is needed to confirm these findings, especially conducting cohort studies on different populations.