Obesity increases risk of mental health disorders across age groups: Study

Obesity greatly increases the chances of getting mental illnesses. While this applies to all age groups, women are at higher risk of most diseases than men, according to a recent study conducted by Complexity Science Hub and the Medical University of Vienna. The findings of the study were published in the specialist journal “Translational Psychiatry”.

“We analyzed a population-wide national registry of inpatient hospitalizations in Austria from 1997 to 2014 to determine the relative risks of co-morbidities in obesity and to identify statistically significant sex differences,” explained Elma Dervik of Complexity Science Hub. can be identified.”

As a result, it became clear that an obesity diagnosis increases the likelihood of a wide range of mental disorders in all age groups – including depression, nicotine addiction, psychosis, anxiety, eating and personality disorders.

Also read: Eating junk food can negatively impact sleep quality: Study

“From a clinical point of view, these results emphasize the need to increase awareness of psychiatric diagnosis in obese patients and, if necessary, to consult specialists at an early stage of diagnosis”, Medical University of Vienna said Michael Leitner.

“To find out which disease usually appears before and after the diagnosis of obesity, we had to develop a new method,” Derwick explained. This allowed the researchers to determine if there were trends and specific patterns in disease incidence.

In the case of all co-diagnoses with the exception of the psychosis spectrum, obesity was in all likelihood the first diagnosis made prior to the manifestation of a psychiatric diagnosis. “Until now, clinicians often considered psychopharmacological drugs to cause the association between mental disorders and obesity, as well as diabetes. This may be true for schizophrenia, where we see the opposite time sequence, but our data does not support this for depression or other psychiatric diagnoses,” explained Alexander Kautzky from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna.

However, whether obesity directly affects mental health or whether the early stages of psychiatric disorders are insufficiently recognized is not yet known. Strikingly, the researchers found significant gender differences for most disorders – women showed an increased risk for all disorders except schizophrenia and nicotine addiction.

While 16.66 percent of obese men also suffer from nicotine abuse disorder, it occurs only in 8.58 percent of obese women. The opposite is true for depression. The rate of diagnosed depressive episodes was nearly three times higher among obese women (13.3 percent obese; 4.8 percent non-obese). Obese men were twice as likely to be affected (6.61 percent obese; 3.21 percent non-obese).

Currently, obesity is a highly prevalent disease worldwide and affects more than 670 million people. The fact that the disease promotes metabolic disorders and severe cardio-metabolic complications (diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, and dyslipidemia) has already been extensively researched.

Since this study also now shows that obesity often precedes serious psychiatric disorders, the findings underscore its importance as a pleiotropic risk factor for all kinds of health problems. This is primarily true for younger age groups, where the risk is most pronounced. For this reason, thorough screening for mental health problems in obese patients is urgently needed to facilitate prevention or ensure that appropriate treatment can be given, the researchers conclude.