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Obesity and psychological distress
The relationship between high body weight and mental health has been studied for several decades. Improvements in the quality of epidemiological, mechanistic and psychological research have brought greater consistency to our understanding of the links. Large-scale population-based epidemiological re...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10475872/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37661745 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0225 |
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author | Steptoe, Andrew Frank, Philipp |
author_facet | Steptoe, Andrew Frank, Philipp |
author_sort | Steptoe, Andrew |
collection | PubMed |
description | The relationship between high body weight and mental health has been studied for several decades. Improvements in the quality of epidemiological, mechanistic and psychological research have brought greater consistency to our understanding of the links. Large-scale population-based epidemiological research has established that high body weight is associated with poorer mental health, particularly depression and subclinical depressive symptoms. There is some evidence for bidirectional relationships, but the most convincing findings are that greater body weight leads to psychological distress rather than the reverse. Particular symptoms of depression and distress may be specifically related to greater body weight. The psychological stress induced by weight stigma and discrimination contributes to psychological distress, and may in turn handicap efforts at weight control. Heightened systemic inflammation and dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis are biological mechanisms that mediate in part the relationship of greater body weight with poorer mental health. Changing negative societal attitudes to high body weights would improve the wellbeing of people living with obesity, and promote more effective weight-inclusive attitudes and behaviours in society at large, particularly in healthcare settings. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Causes of obesity: theories, conjectures and evidence (Part II)’. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10475872 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104758722023-09-05 Obesity and psychological distress Steptoe, Andrew Frank, Philipp Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles The relationship between high body weight and mental health has been studied for several decades. Improvements in the quality of epidemiological, mechanistic and psychological research have brought greater consistency to our understanding of the links. Large-scale population-based epidemiological research has established that high body weight is associated with poorer mental health, particularly depression and subclinical depressive symptoms. There is some evidence for bidirectional relationships, but the most convincing findings are that greater body weight leads to psychological distress rather than the reverse. Particular symptoms of depression and distress may be specifically related to greater body weight. The psychological stress induced by weight stigma and discrimination contributes to psychological distress, and may in turn handicap efforts at weight control. Heightened systemic inflammation and dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis are biological mechanisms that mediate in part the relationship of greater body weight with poorer mental health. Changing negative societal attitudes to high body weights would improve the wellbeing of people living with obesity, and promote more effective weight-inclusive attitudes and behaviours in society at large, particularly in healthcare settings. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Causes of obesity: theories, conjectures and evidence (Part II)’. The Royal Society 2023-10-23 2023-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10475872/ /pubmed/37661745 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0225 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Steptoe, Andrew Frank, Philipp Obesity and psychological distress |
title | Obesity and psychological distress |
title_full | Obesity and psychological distress |
title_fullStr | Obesity and psychological distress |
title_full_unstemmed | Obesity and psychological distress |
title_short | Obesity and psychological distress |
title_sort | obesity and psychological distress |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10475872/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37661745 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0225 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT steptoeandrew obesityandpsychologicaldistress AT frankphilipp obesityandpsychologicaldistress |