Citation

Appl. Psychol. Health Wellbeing 2017; 9(3): 410-428.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, International Association of Applied Psychology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/aphw.12104

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Background Obesity and depression are two major health issues in contemporary societies. This study aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) what is the impact of macro?level adverse socioeconomic circumstances on depression? and (2) how do macro?level variations in the socioeconomic context affect the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and depression? Methods Data from the 7th round of the European Social Survey were used, collected from a sample size of 37,623 participants and aggregated around a total of 20 countries. A random intercept multilevel model was constructed to study the variations in the relationship between depression and BMI. The contextual effect of risk of poverty, unemployment rate, and gross domestic product per capita were studied at the country level.

RESULTS First, both unemployment and poverty risk were found to be positively associated with depressive disorders. Second, the results show that a higher risk of poverty at the macro level may increase the effect of BMI on depression in European countries.

CONCLUSION The present study provides new evidence suggesting that the obesity?depression relationship will be, on average, stronger in countries with poor socioeconomic conditions. Therefore, adverse socioeconomic contextual conditions may increase depression associated with obesity.

Language: en

Keywords

depression; Europe; multilevel analysis; obesity; socioeconomic context; socioeconomic status