Depression and Obesity: A result of negative mental association - Essay Example

Depression and Obesity A result of negative mental association Introduction Depression is a mental of mind which is completely dependent on the thought process of the person and no external situation like financial status, physical looks and the ethnic background are responsible for it. The body image is a result of your own opinions and hence the negative perception of the obesity is more responsible for negative self concept than the obesity itself. Hence, there is no clear and significant association of obesity with the presence of depression in adolescents. In the article, “Depression In Adolescent Obesity : Cultural moderators of the association between obesity and depressive symptoms”, the authors have stated that there were many studies that have showed that there is no association between depression and obesity in adolescents. However, our outlook towards obesity makes us to think, “How can a person who is obese be happy?” So, even if we get to see adolescents who are obese and still living their life happily, we end up thinking that that must be only on the surface. This person must be depressed inside. This shows how negative we are towards obesity. The important point that authors have made is that if the sample size used to study the association of obesity and depression was small, then the results were ignorable. However, because the samples used in the longitudinal study was large, the results which says that there is no association of depression with obesity, are dependable. The authors have mentioned the studies that tried to find an association between the obesity and depression considering the gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. However, they have shown how the studies have failed to explicitly test the assumption that the association between obesity and depression varies according to the gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Method used by the researchers: The study was conducted on participants in their early adolescence as it is the beginning of development of the phase where physical looks are given more importance no matter what gender, ethnicity or Socioeconomic status they have. The selection of the participants from the chosen age group was appropriate to justify the right method. The method used was a five year longitudinal study which included adolescents from 13 schools to generate an ethnically and sociaoeconomically diverse samples. They were weighed with their indoor clothes on and no shoes. The weight indicators were normal weight, overweight and obese. The psychological aspect was measured through questionnaire containing questions related to their emotional, mental and social attitudes. For the socioeconomic deprivation, the Townsend Index, which has been standardized across UK, was used. The ethnicity was determined from the category of ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘Asian’, ‘mixed’ or ‘other’. The total students who were able to participate were 4320 adolescents. In them, majority was white with 56.4%. The study’s inclusion of standardized scales for Socioeconomic status (SES), both the genders, all the ethnic groups and all the weight indicators show that the method used was a correct and a complete one as it included all the variables possible like gender, ethnicity, weight and SES. The authors approach to the study was a complete one as they did not leave any variable to be studied. They included all those aspects which were supposed to be increasing the association of obesity with depression. In the first method, the association of obesity with emotional symptoms and obesity with psychological problems was found in girls. They also found that in both girls and boys, there is small association between higher BMI and lower emotional well-being, but no specific link with obesity. SES was found to have no effect on the association of obesity with depression. Method 2: The participants in this method were only girls. The BMI, depressive symptoms and SES of the girls was studied at the school level. It was found that because girls had higher rates of obesity and scored high on depression scale, the overall association has little meaning. The result of the study revealed the mean score of the obese girls on depression scale was equal to the mean score of the girls with normal weight. The results give little support to the idea that obesity is associated with higher depression in male or female adolescents or that gender plays a significant role in it. The finding that weight status accounted for 0.2% of variation in depressive mood shows how insignificant the amount of association is. So the assumption that the obese adolescent is more likely to be depressed than a an adolescent who is not obese is not proved. The authors have studied the association of obesity with depression across different aspects like gender, SES, ethnicity and emotional aspects. However, they are right when they say that as people themselves have negative association with obesity, they tend to think that people who are obese are more prone to depression. That is the reason in spite of so many studies showing no association of obesity with depression, people still think that there is an association. The author’s findings are supported by researches carried out by other researchers. The relationship between obesity and depression is not established clearly yet. The study carried out on female adolescent who were obese and female adolescent who were not obese revealed that even though the females who were obese were slightly unhappy with their body, there was no sign of depression or anxiety ( Bray and Baouchard 2008, p.580). It was found that adolescents who are morbidly obese, have greater incidences of depression. However, the word that we need to look at is ‘morbid’. This does not prove that all the adolescents who are obese are prone to depression (Donohue, Moore and Scott 2008, p.50). There has been no single study which can say for sure that there is an association of obesity and depression in adolescents. So looking at all the aspects that were included in the study, we can surely say that the study was a complete one and there is no significant association between depression and obesity in adolescents. References: Bray, Geaorge A. and Bouchard, Claude. (2008). Handbook of obesity. USA. Inc. NY: Informa Healthcare Donohue, William., Moore Brie and Scott Babara (2008). Handbook of Pediatric and adolescent Obesity Treatment. USA: Taylor and Francis Group Wadle, J., Williamson, S., Johnson, F., and Edwards, C. (2006). Depression In Adolescent Obesity : Cultural moderators of the association between obesity and depressive symptoms. International Journal Of Obesity, 30, 634-643 . Read More