14 DAY TRIAL // By making a study on the mental well being of overweight girls, sociologists from Penn State realized that they were searching for problems in the wrong place. The danger of depression is way higher in girls that perceive themselves as being overweight and in boys that are underweight.
The research considered 6,557 adolescent boys and 6,126 teen girls, part of the Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Data included: the real weight of the participants, their perceived weight and the scores they had obtain at the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Parental obesity, socioeconomical factors, physical activity, health status, family structure, race and ethnicity were also considered.
The results made scientists believe that they were focusing on the wrong adolescents. “We focused on how overweight girls feel,” said Molly A. Martin, assistant professor of sociology and demography. “But they may not suffer as many symptoms as we suspected. Past researchers may have missed the key group: normal weight girls who think they are overweight, and underweight boys.”
“Parents often worry about overweight girls' mental health, but our findings show that it is girls who have a healthy weight but perceive being overweight who are most likely to feel depressed,” stated Jason N. Houle, a graduate student in sociology and demography. Michelle L. Frisco, assistant professor of sociology and demography, added that “clinicians cannot assume that healthy weight adolescents know their weight is healthy or feel good about it.”
In past studies, researchers analyzed separately the consequences for actual overweight children and also how teenagers perceived their weight. In the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, researchers report that “focusing on the intersection of weight and weight perceptions better shows which adolescents are at risk of depressive symptoms than an approach that treats both predictors as independent, unrelated constructs”.
The problem for people's perception of weight might just be induced by the society. Associating thinness with beauty only creates a stereotype inside adolescent girls' mind and can cause severe damage to their self esteem, thus depression and other psychological problems.