Billboard.com has announced the death of Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Syd Barrett from complications of diabetes. According to Billboard, Barrett left Pink Floyd over thirty years ago due to mental health issues, and lived the remainder of his life in seclusion with his mother in Cambridge, England.

Known for psychedelic rock, Pink Floyd, with Barrett and members Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason, gained an international cult-like following due to its innovative beyond the boundaries rock.

By some accounts, Barrett's LSD drug use created mental problems for him and he eventually retired from the band to live in his hometown of Cambridge. Pink Floyd band members dedicated two songs to Barrett, who was seen as influential in all that Pink Floyd symbolized and position it held in the rock world, with Shine on You Crazy Diamond and Wish You Were Here.

At the Live 8 benefit, Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason performed Wish You Were Here in Barrett's honor. Barrett was 60.

In an earlier post, we shared study findings linking diabetes to depression. As a result of this, the Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis researchers recommended that diabetics would benefit from taking antidepressants in order to control depression.

In another post, we shared study results that University of Alberta researchers were able to establish that Type 2 diabetes patients tended to have a history of depression extending back before they were diagnosed with diabetes.

Most recently, during the American Diabetes Association annual meeting, study results were presented that suggest antidepressants actually appear to increase progression to diabetes in people who are already at risk for the disease. Not exactly in line with the previous two studies, is it. Keeping up with research can be exhausting at times. Stay with me. The ending of this post is priceless.

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers collected information on 3,000 people who took part in the Diabetes Prevention Program. According to the researchers, those who took antidepressants regularly were two to three times more likely to develop diabetes. No increased risk was reported for those not taking antidepressants. However, the study participants who took the glucose-lowering drug metformin with antidepressants also had not increased risk of developing diabetes.

I am going to end this with a direct quote from study co-leader Richard Rubin, "We don't have a clue what's going on."