Korean J Fam Pract. 2018; 8(6): 904-910  https://doi.org/10.21215/kjfp.2018.8.6.904
The Relationship between Underweight, Normal, Obese and Depressive Symptom in Korean Adults
Jinwoo Park*, Ji-Ae Youn, MinSeong Kang, HyunSoo Kam, Myoung-Sook Noh
Department of Family Medicine, Busan Adventist Hospital, Busan, Korea
Jinwoo Park
Tel: +82-51-600-7557, Fax: +82-51-600-7557
E-mail: jinwoopark13@gmail.com
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7950-0013
Received: March 21, 2018; Revised: July 9, 2018; Accepted: July 26, 2018; Published online: December 20, 2018.
© The Korean Academy of Family Medicine. All rights reserved.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background: Obesity, underweight, and depression all have high interest and give rise to public health problems in modern societies. As many studies have shown, obesity is not only associated with depression but also with other physical and mental illnesses. Although there has been a recent rise in underweight people caused by the negative perception of obesity, there is a lack of studies about the connection between being underweight and depressed in Korea. Therefore, we evaluated the relationships between being underweight, of normal weight, obese, and depressed in a representative sample of the Korean population.
Methods: Data were derived from the 6th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Subjects included 5,592 adults, older than 19 years of age. We divided the subjects into three groups (underweight, normal weight, and obese) and their associations with depressive symptoms were examined. Social demographic, physical, and mental health-related factors were analyzed for these groups. We used logistic regression to analyze the relationships between the three groups and depressive symptoms.
Results: After adjusting for sex, household income, and education level, compared with the normal weight group, the odds ratio (OR) of the underweight group was 1.30 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.83?2.01, P=0.224) and that of the obese group was 1.12 (95% CI=0.93?1.35, P=0.094). After adjusting for all confounding factors, compared with the normal weight group, the OR of the underweight group was 0.85 (95% CI=0.49?1.49, P=0.282) and that of the obese group was 0.99 (95% CI=0.77?1.27, P=0.125).
Conclusion: This study found that the underweight and obese groups did not have higher risks of depressive symptoms than the normal weight group.
Keywords: Depressive Symptom; Underweight; Normal Weight; Obese
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