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Obesity, Overweightness, and Depressive Symptomology Among American Indian Youth

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Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objectives

Despite evidence that American Indian adolescents are at a heightened risk of obesity/overweightness and experiencing depression, relative to other groups, there exists a dearth of studies that have examined the association between objective and perceptual measures of obesity and overweightness and depression with this understudied group. Our study represents one of the first studies to examine this association among American Indian youth.

Methods

Using a subsample of American Indian youth from waves I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (a survey of schools and students in the USA, with wave I collected in 1994 and wave II collected in 1995), we explore this association. We examine three measures of weight: obesity, body mass index, and weight perception. We also consider gender-specific models and a subsample of non-Hispanic whites, in order to assess race differences in the obesity and overweightness-depression relationship.

Results

Our findings reveal that neither of our objective measures of weight, obesity, nor body mass index are significant predictors of depressive symptoms for either American Indian or white youth. However, we find evidence that the subjective measure of weight perception is a significant predictor of depressive symptoms for white females, but not for American Indian females.

Conclusions

Our results contribute to past findings that measures of obesity/overweightness weight may be more important to white female’s mental health than females from other racial groups, although additional research is warranted.

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Notes

  1. Because our focus was on the association between measures of obesity/overweightness and depressive symptomology on an understudied group (AIs), we did not include people who self-reported other racial/ethnic backgrounds, including African-Americans (n = 4807 at wave I) and Hispanic/Latinos (n = 3525 at wave I).

  2. It should be noted that the weight perception coefficient (column 1, Table 3) approaches statistical significance (p = .057) and that if the reader adopts a more liberal definition of statistical significance, one would find evidence that weight perception matters for AI females as well as white females in predicting depressive symptomology. Given the relatively small sample size of AI females included in these analyses (n = 322) and the known association between sample size and p values, future studies may uncover stronger evidence that would support a finding of an association between AI female weight perception and depressive symptomology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Montana State University Bozeman, Bozeman, MT, USA

    David Eitle & Tamela McNulty Eitle

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  1. David Eitle
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Correspondence to David Eitle.

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Ethical Approval

For this type of study, formal consent is not required. However, we did receive approval from our university’s Institutional Review Board. See also the Add Health website for more information on the original collection of data from human subjects, including informed consent (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth).

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Eitle, D., Eitle, T.M. Obesity, Overweightness, and Depressive Symptomology Among American Indian Youth. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 5, 1305–1314 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-018-0479-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-018-0479-9

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