We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
The effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the mental health of people with obesity.
- Authors
Mukhopadhyay, Sankar
- Abstract
Obesity is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Obesity is also a risk factor for severe COVID‐19 disease and therefore may have contributed to adverse mental health outcomes in this vulnerable population during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We compare the trajectory of mental health outcomes of people with obesity with normal‐weight people before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic using nationally representative individual‐level longitudinal data from the National Health Interview Survey and Difference‐in‐Difference regressions. Our results indicate that severe anxiety increased by 2.75 (95% CI: 0.0056–0.0494; p‐value 0.014) percentage points, representing a 31.3% relative increase, and anxiety‐related prescription drug usage increased by 2.75 (95% CI: 0.0076–0.0473; p‐value<0.01) percentage points, representing a 19.2% relative increase among people with obesity, compared to normal‐weight people. We conclude that people with obesity experienced an increase in the incidence of severe anxiety and anxiety‐related prescription drug usage during the COVID‐19 pandemic, which was not observed among normal‐weight individuals. Furthermore, women, less‐educated, and rural residents with obesity disproportionately bore the burden of the pandemic.
- Subjects
OBESITY risk factors; RISK assessment; SELF-evaluation; MENTAL health; AT-risk people; INTERVIEWING; PROBABILITY theory; ANXIETY; LONGITUDINAL method; SURVEYS; RURAL population; COMPARATIVE studies; CONFIDENCE intervals; COVID-19 pandemic; REGRESSION analysis; MENTAL depression; COVID-19
- Publication
Stress & Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 2024, Vol 40, Issue 3, p1
- ISSN
1532-3005
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/smi.3359