This study aimed to estimate networks of depressive symptoms among Irish adults with and without diabetes at two time points and compare between the two groups at each time point using data from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).

Participants were from Wave 1 (2009–2011) and Wave 4 (2016) of TILDA, with n = 639 participants with diabetes and n = 7,837 without diabetes at Wave 1, and n = 1,151 with diabetes and n = 4,531 without diabetes at Wave 4. Depressive symptoms were measured using the 8 items of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Network psychometric analysis was used to examine symptom centrality, symptom-level associations, and network comparisons at each time point.

Stable, strongly connected networks emerged for people with and without diabetes at both time points. The symptoms of feeling depressed, feeling like everything’s an effort, not enjoying life, feeling sad, and couldn’t get going were the most central nodes in all networks, which did not differ between people with and without diabetes. However, for people with diabetes, the network was more densely connected at Wave 4, when the sample was predominately people with newly diagnosed diabetes. Furthermore, the relationship between ‘felt lonely’ and ‘couldn’t get going’ and between ‘not enjoying life’ and ’sad’ was significantly stronger for people with diabetes than for those without.

This study provides a more detailed understanding of the structure of depressive symptoms at two time points in older Irish adults with and without type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

An average of 1300 adults develop First Episode Psychosis (FEP) in Ireland each year. Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) is now widely accepted as best practice in the treatment of conditions such as schizophrenia. A local EIP programme was established in the Dublin South Central Mental Health Service in 2012.

This is a cross-sectional study of service users presenting to the Dublin South Central Mental Health Service with FEP from 2016 to 2022 following the introduction of the EIP programme. We compared this to a previously published retrospective study of treatment as usual from 2002 to 2012.

Most service users in this study were male, single, unemployed and living with their partner or spouse across both time periods. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for psychosis was provided to 12% (n = 8) of service users pre-EIP as compared to 52% (n = 30) post-programme introduction (p < 0.001), and 3% (n = 2) of service users engaged with behavioural family therapy pre-EIP as opposed to 15% (n = 9) after (p < 0.01). Rates of composite baseline physical healthcare monitoring improved significantly (p < 0.001).

Exclusive allocation of multidisciplinary team staff to EIP leads to improved compliance with recommended guidelines, particularly CBT-p, formal family therapy and physical health monitoring.