Being overweight in childhood may heighten lifetime risk of depression
The study by Deborah Gibson-Smith from VU University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues found that being overweight at age 8 or 13 was associated with more than triple the risk of developing major depression at some point in their lives, whilst carrying excess weight over a lifetime (both as a child and as an adult) quadrupled the chance of developing depression compared to only being overweight as an adult. More than one in three children in the USA are overweight and nearly one in five children aged between 2 and 19 years are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A similar picture emerges in England where one in three 10- and 11-year-olds in their last primary school year are now overweight or obese, according to the National Child Measurement Programme. Previous studies have shown that people who are obese are more likely to become depressed , but few have looked at the influence of early-life obesity over the long term, or the age-...