Released: July 04, 2006

Fat people not more jolly, study says

Source: Associated Press [USA Today]

Fat people are not more jolly, according to a study that instead found obesity is strongly linked with depression and other mood disorders.
Whether obesity might cause these problems or is the result of them is not certain, and the research does not provide an answer, but there are theories to support both arguments.

Depression often causes people to abandon activities, and some medications used to treat mental illness can cause weight gain. On the other hand, obesity is often seen as a stigma and overweight people often are subject to teasing and other hurtful behavior.

The study of more than 9,000 adults found that mood and anxiety disorders including depression were about 25% more common in the obese people studied than in the non-obese. Substance abuse was an exception — obese people were about 25% less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than slimmer participants.

The results appear in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, released Monday. The lead author was Gregory Simon, a researcher with Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, a large non-profit health plan in the Pacific Northwest.

The results “suggest that the cultural stereotype of the jolly fat person is more a figment of our imagination than a reality,” said Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study.

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