Despite conventional wisdom suggesting an etiological link between major depression and adolescent obesity, a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found no independent association between major depression and body weight in a sample of adolescents aged 11-17 years.
Robert E. Roberts, Ph.D., and Dr. Hao T. Duong collected data from a two-wave cohort of 3,134 adolescents examined initially and at 1-year follow-up. Body image was measured with the patients’ perceived weight, and obesity was defined as body mass index greater than or equal to the 95th percentile using measured height and weight.
No independent association was found between major depression and body weight, although the study did not account for lifetime trajectories for obesity and depression, reported Dr. Roberts, formerly of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and now with the university’s School of Public Health Regional Campus in San Antonio, and Dr. Duong of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Vietnam.
“If there is an etiologic link between major depression and body weight among adolescents, it most likely operates through processes involving components of body image, since controlling for body image eliminated the association between depression and obesity,” the authors wrote.
Read the full article here: (J Affect Disord. 2015 Nov 1;186:162-7. [doi:10.1016/j.jad.2015.06.030]).