Obesity and Depression

Posted on January 19, 2008 in Latest News

It’s likely that depression and obesity fuel one another. Experts have proved that when people gain weight, they’re more likely to become depressed, and when they get depressed, they have more trouble losing weight.

In women

Women with clinical depression were more than twice as likely to be obese (a body mass index of 30 or more), and obese women were more than twice as likely to be depressed, the study found.
It also found that women with BMIs of 30 or higher exercised the least, had the poorest body image, and consumed 20 percent more calories than women with lower BMIs.

In Children

One study, published in Pediatrics, found that the longer a child is overweight, the more he or she is at risk for depression and other mental health disorders.The study followed nearly 1,000 white children in North Carolina, ages 9 to 16, over eight years. Young boys, but not girls, proved especially prone to the dual problem of obesity with depression.

Remedy

The best thing parents can do is to treat obesity as a health issue, not a problem of appearance, and to accurately record their child’s height and weight. He urges parents, physicians and psychologists to press insurance companies to cover behavioral therapy for obesity.It’s also important to recognize that obesity isn’t necessarily caused by overeating.

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