Effectiveness of eHealth-Based Psychological Interventions for Depression Treatment in Patients With Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: This systematic review aims to update the available information on the efficacy of psychological interventions delivered through ICTs to improve depressive symptomatology in patients with diabetes. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed following the PRISMA guidelines and using MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Cochrane Library databases to search for randomized clinical trials of eHealth treatments for patients with diabetes and comorbid depression from 1995 through 2020. In addition, studies related to follow-up appointments were identified. I Results: The initial search identified 427 relevant scientific publications. After removing duplicates and ineligible citations, a total of 201 articles were analyzed in full text. Ten articles met the criteria of this review and were included, obtaining very good scientific quality after evaluation with the PEDro scale. The main results show that the eHealth psychological intervention for depression in patients with diabetes showed beneficial effects both at the end of treatment and in the short (3 months) and long term (6 and 12 months) for the improvement of depressive symptomatology. Conclusions: ICT-based psychological interventions for the treatment of depression in people with diabetes appear to be effective in reducing depressive symptomatology but do not appear to provide significant results with regard to glycemic control.