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Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression

BACKGROUND: There is sparse evidence on the impact of health information on mental health as well as on the mechanisms governing this relationship. We estimate the causal impact of health information on mental health via the effect of a diabetes diagnosis on depression. METHODS: We employ a fuzzy re...

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Autores principales: Gaggero, Alessio, Gil, Joan, Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores, Zucchelli, Eugenio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10316538/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37395821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00451-w
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author Gaggero, Alessio
Gil, Joan
Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores
Zucchelli, Eugenio
author_facet Gaggero, Alessio
Gil, Joan
Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores
Zucchelli, Eugenio
author_sort Gaggero, Alessio
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: There is sparse evidence on the impact of health information on mental health as well as on the mechanisms governing this relationship. We estimate the causal impact of health information on mental health via the effect of a diabetes diagnosis on depression. METHODS: We employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting the exogenous cut-off value of a biomarker used to diagnose type-2 diabetes (glycated haemoglobin, HbA1c) and information on psycometrically validated measures of diagnosed clinical depression drawn from rich administrative longitudinal individual-level data from a large municipality in Spain. This approach allows estimating the causal impact of a type-2 diabetes diagnosis on clinica ldepression. RESULTS: We find that overall a type-2 diabetes diagnosis increases the probability of becoming depressed, however this effect appears to be driven mostly by women, and in particular those who are relatively younger and obese. Results also appear to differ by changes in lifestyle induced by the diabetes diagnosis: while women who did not lose weight are more likely to develop depression, men who did lose weight present a reduced probability of being depressed. Results are robust to alternative parametric and non-parametric specifications and placebo tests. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides novel empirical evidence on the causal impact of health information on mental health, shedding light on gender-based differences in such effects and potential mechanisms through changes in lifestyle behaviours. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13561-023-00451-w.
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spelling pubmed-103165382023-07-04 Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression Gaggero, Alessio Gil, Joan Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores Zucchelli, Eugenio Health Econ Rev Review BACKGROUND: There is sparse evidence on the impact of health information on mental health as well as on the mechanisms governing this relationship. We estimate the causal impact of health information on mental health via the effect of a diabetes diagnosis on depression. METHODS: We employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting the exogenous cut-off value of a biomarker used to diagnose type-2 diabetes (glycated haemoglobin, HbA1c) and information on psycometrically validated measures of diagnosed clinical depression drawn from rich administrative longitudinal individual-level data from a large municipality in Spain. This approach allows estimating the causal impact of a type-2 diabetes diagnosis on clinica ldepression. RESULTS: We find that overall a type-2 diabetes diagnosis increases the probability of becoming depressed, however this effect appears to be driven mostly by women, and in particular those who are relatively younger and obese. Results also appear to differ by changes in lifestyle induced by the diabetes diagnosis: while women who did not lose weight are more likely to develop depression, men who did lose weight present a reduced probability of being depressed. Results are robust to alternative parametric and non-parametric specifications and placebo tests. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides novel empirical evidence on the causal impact of health information on mental health, shedding light on gender-based differences in such effects and potential mechanisms through changes in lifestyle behaviours. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13561-023-00451-w. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10316538/ /pubmed/37395821 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00451-w Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Review
Gaggero, Alessio
Gil, Joan
Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores
Zucchelli, Eugenio
Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title_full Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title_fullStr Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title_full_unstemmed Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title_short Sick and depressed? The causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
title_sort sick and depressed? the causal impact of a diabetes diagnosis on depression
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10316538/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37395821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00451-w
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