According to a new study, obesity significantly increases the likelihood of depression, nicotine addiction, psychosis, anxiety, eating disorders and personality disorders.
To find out which disease occurs first, researchers from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna and the Medical University (Meduni) Vienna analyzed data on inpatient hospital stays. “In the vast majority of cases, obesity was significantly more likely to be the first diagnosis before a psychiatric diagnosis manifested itself,” says a broadcast by the CSH and Meduni.
In most cases, obesity that causes illness is attested before depression, anxiety disorders and “somatoform disorders” (physical symptoms such as pain, dizziness, digestive, heart and breathing problems without a physical cause).
So far, doctors have often assumed that psychopharmacological drugs are the cause of the connection between mental disorders and obesity, according to Alexander Kautzky from the Department of Psychiatry at Meduni Vienna.
Obese women are therefore at a higher risk for most mental illnesses than obese men. In the case of depression, for example, it is three times as high for obese women and “only” twice as high for men. An exception is nicotine addiction, whereby men who are obese and overweight are affected twice as often as women.
Start therapy in time
The fact that an obesity diagnosis increases the likelihood of many mental disorders “underlines from a clinical point of view the need to raise awareness of psychiatric diagnoses in obese patients and, if necessary, to consult specialists at an early stage of the diagnosis,” said Michael Leutner from the clinical department for Endocrinology and Metabolism at Meduni Vienna.
Source: Nachrichten
