Obesity and its Association with Emotional Factors: Comparative Study among New University Students

Abstract

Objective: to identify whether obesity in a group of students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam) is associated with emotional factors such as: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and passive coping. Material and methods: cross-sectional, descriptive and prospective study. It was held in the General Direction of Medical Services (dgsm), System of Orientation in Health (sos), of the unam. 100 students participated from second and third semester of the class of 2010, from different careers, to whom it was applied four instruments to measure the emotional factors: Beck inventory for depression (21 questions), Beck inventory for anxiety (21), self-esteem questionnaire (10) and scale of coping (26 questions); total of 78 questions, which were distributed and applied by the dgsm psychologists. It was registered a file for each participant with their identification data (name, age, sex, school of origin, registration number, semester in course and phone number); socio-demographic information (socioeconomic level, genograms, and area of residency); as well as somatometric parameters (standardization of measurements of weight (k), size (cm) and bmi (k/size in m2).) Results: 74% of the sample was female and 26% male, with respect to age, the most frequent was 21-year-old with 16%, the youngest was 12 years old and the oldest was 50 years old, averaged 23.78 and a standard deviation of 6.64; it was found that bmi ranged from 16.99 to 45.00 with an average of 26 and a standard deviation of 4.88. Statistical analysis showed no significant difference related to normal-weight and overweight with the emotional factors. Conclusions: in this group of students obesity was not a cause of emotional problems, therefore, there is no psychological profile that determines to be obese. This means, obesity itself is not a trigger for emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or having a passive coping.