Diabetes distress in Indonesian patients with type 2 diabetes: a comparison between primary and tertiary care

The number of people living with diabetes mellitus (DM) in Indonesia has continued to increase over the last 6 years. Four previous studies in U.S have found that higher DD scores were associated with worse psychological outcomes, lower health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and increased risk of T2DM complications. In this study, we aimed to firstly compare DD scores in Indonesian T2DM outpatients treated in primary care versus those in tertiary care. Subsequently, we investigated whether socio-demographic characteristics and clinical conditions explain potential differences in DD score across healthcare settings.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on Java island in three primary care (n = 108) and four tertiary care (n = 524) facilities. The participants completed the Bahasa Indonesia version of the Diabetes Distress Scale questionnaire (DDS17 Bahasa Indonesia). Ordinal regression analysis was conducted with the quartile of the summation of the DD score as the dependent variable to investigate how the association between the level of healthcare facilities and DD altered when adding different variables in the model.

The final adjusted model showed that the level of healthcare facilities was strongly associated with DD (p < .001), with participants in primary care having a 3.68 times (95% CI 2.46-5.55) higher likelihood of being more distressed than the participants in tertiary care. This association was detected after including the socio-demographic characteristics and clinical conditions as model confounders.

This is the first study in Indonesia to compare DD scores within different healthcare facilities. We recommend a regular DD assessment, possibly closely aligned with health-literacy partner programs, especially for T2DM patients in primary care settings.