Objective: This study identified major risk factors for depression in community diabetic patients using machine learning techniques and developed predictive models for predicting the high-risk group for depression in diabetic patients based on multiple risk factors.
Methods: This study analyzed 26,829 adults living in the community who were diagnosed with diabetes by a doctor. The prevalence of a depressive disorder was the dependent variable in this study. This study developed a model for predicting diabetic depression using multiple logistic regression, which corrected all confounding factors in order to identify the relationship (influence) of predictive factors for diabetic depression by entering the top nine variables with high importance, which were identified in CatBoost.
Results: The prevalence of depression was 22.4% (n = 6,001). This study calculated the importance of factors related to depression in diabetic patients living in South Korean community using CatBoost to find that the top nine variables with high importance were gender, smoking status, changes in drinking before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in smoking before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, subjective health, concern about economic loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in sleeping hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic activity, and the number of people you can ask for help in a disaster situation such as COVID-19 infection.
Conclusion: It is necessary to identify the high-risk group for diabetes and depression at an early stage, while considering multiple risk factors, and to seek a personalized psychological support system at the primary medical level, which can improve their mental health.
Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; CatBoost; depression; diabetic patients; machine learning.
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