Perceived rather than actual overweight is associated with mental health problems in adolescence.

BACKGROUND

Overweight and perceived overweight are common among adolescents. The nature of the relationship between overweight/perceived overweight and mental health problems is still unclear.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to examine whether actual overweight, perceived overweight or both are associated with internalizing and externalizing disorders among adolescents.

METHODS

Data were collected by two similar school surveys in all Finnish-speaking secondary schools in Tampere (population 200,000) in the academic years 2002-2003 and 2012-2013. A total of 2775 acceptable responses were received. All the analyses were carried out separately for girls and boys. Mean age of the respondents was 15.6 years.

RESULTS

In multivariate analyses perceived overweight, not actual weight, was significantly associated with higher risk of self-reported depression (OR: 4.3, 95% CI: 2.9-6.3, p < .001) and self-reported conduct disorder (OR: 2.3, 95% CI: 1.6-3.3, p < .001) in girls and with higher risk of self-reported depression (OR: 3.26, 95% CI: 1.65-6.4, p = .001) and self-reported social phobia (OR: 2.4, 95% CI: 1.0-5.6, p = .05) in boys.

CONCLUSION

Perceived overweight rather than actual weight status is associated with both internalizing and externalizing mental health problems in adolescents.