Originally published September 22 2005
Study suggests humiliation and other psychological factors contribute to teen obesity
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Depression is common in obese teens, but Reuters reports that the humiliation and shame that they experience because of their weight may explain the connection between the two, according to a study by scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden.
"There is a clear statistical association between adolescent obesity and adolescent depression," study author Dr. Rickard L. Sjoberg, of Uppsala University in Sweden, told Reuters Health.
Sjoberg and colleagues analyzed data from 4,703 children, aged 15 and 17 years, who participated in the Survey of Adolescent Life in Vestmanland 2004, a psychosocial health survey administered triannually in Sweden.
They found that overweight and obesity was more common among boys than among girls, while depression was more common among girls.
Obese teens reported experiencing more symptoms of depression than their normal-weight or overweight peers and had a higher risk of depression, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.
Also, obese teens were more likely to say they had been treated in a degrading manner, had been ignored or otherwise had shaming experiences within the past three months than were their normal-weight or overweight peers.
Further, adolescents who reported the highest number of shame experiences were more than 11 times more likely to be depressed than those who reported the lowest number of shame experiences, the report indicates.
Teenagers with unemployed parents and those in families in which the parents were separated were more likely to have depressive symptoms than their peers.
Sjoberg speculated that the association between the teenagers' depression and having an unemployed parent may possibly be explained by the idea "that having a parent who has the experience of being unwanted at the labor market or incapable of meeting the demands of this market will put an increased psychological strain on the family system which will increase the risk of the adolescent developing depression."
Altogether, the study's findings imply "that an understanding of the social consequences of obesity is also necessary in order to make sense of the obesity-depression association," Sjoberg told Reuters Health.
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