Association between actual weight status, perceived weight and depressive, anxious symptoms in Chinese adolescents: a cross-sectional study

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Yizhen Yu¹  Ying Ma¹  Huiping Zhu¹  Jie Tang¹  Yukai Du¹  Zhuoya Liu¹ 

[1] Department of Child, Adolescence & Woman Health Care, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, 13rd Hongkong Road, Wuhan, P.R. China;

关键词: Depressive Symptom;    Body Image;    Anxious Symptom;    Weight Status;    Bulimia Nervosa;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-594

 received in 2010-05-10, accepted in 2010-10-08,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroudThe purpose of this study was to describe actual measured weight and perceived weight and to explore associations with depressive, anxiety symptoms in school adolescents in China.MethodsA sample of 1144 Chinese adolescents was randomly selected from four schools in Wuhan, China, including 665 boys and 479 girls with ages ranging between 10 and 17 years. Actual measured weight and height and perceived weight status were compared to anxiety and depressive symptoms measured using the revised Self-Rating Anxiety Scale and Children's Depression Inventory. A general linear model was used to compare differences in psychological symptoms among the teenagers with different measured and perceived weights.ResultsWhen compared with standardized weight tables (WHO age- and gender-specific body mass index (BMI) cutoffs (2007 reference)), girls were more likely to misperceive themselves as overweight, whereas more boys misclassified their weight status as underweight. The adolescents who perceived themselves as overweight were more likely to experience depressive and anxiety symptoms (except girls) than those who perceived themselves as normal and/or underweight. However, no significant association was found between depressive and anxiety symptoms actual measured weight status.ConclusionsPerceived weight status, but not the actual weight status, was associated with psychological symptoms.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Tang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.