People with mental disorders often have increased rates of physical disorders, including obesity. This may be due to genetic factors, lifestyle choices, and metabolic effects of psychotropic medications. Obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), which is a person’s weight divided by the square of his or her height. A person with a BMI of 30 or more is generally considered obese. Being obese is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.

What is the evidence for obesity in people with PTSD?

Moderate to low quality evidence found around half of middle-aged people with PTSD are obese. Higher quality evidence finds this represents a medium-sized increase in risk of obesity when compared to people without PTSD. Moderate to high quality evidence also found large effects of increased rates of obesity in people with PTSD aged between 20 and 30 years and aged over 60 years when compared to age-matched controls.

August 2021

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The post Obesity appeared first on NeuRA Library.

Obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), which is a person’s weight divided by the square of his or her height. A person with a BMI of 30 or more on metric measures is generally considered obese. Being obese is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

People with a severe mental illness are at increased risk of obesity, which may be due to genetic and/or socio-economic factors, lifestyle choices, and metabolic effects of many psychotropic medications.

What is the evidence for obesity in people with bipolar disorder?

Moderate quality evidence finds a small, increase in the rate of obesity in people with bipolar disorder compared to people without the disorder. The rate of obesity in children and adolescents with bipolar disorder is around 15%. Moderate to low quality evidence finds obesity is associated with worse symptoms and functioning. Weight loss following bariatric surgery is similar in people with bipolar disorder as in controls.

October 2021

Image: ©Delphotostock – stock.adobe.com

The post Obesity appeared first on NeuRA Library.