Elucidating the Relationship Between Obesity and Depression: Recommendations for Future Research

The obese population is heterogeneous in its experiences of psychosocial disturbances, yet many obese individuals do experience such problems as body image disturbance, low self-esteem, diminished self-efficacy, and binge eating. Furthermore, recent research has repeatedly found obesity to correlate with negative affect, depressed mood, and clinical depression. In their comprehensive review, Markowitz, Friedman, and Arent (2008) identify numerous psychosocial and biological processes that they hypothesize to act as mediating factors in the relationship between obesity and depression. This commentary extends Markowitz and colleagues’ review and proposed causal pathway model by (a) evaluating the specificity of the relationship between obesity and depression, and (b) providing recommendations for the empirical evaluation of causal hypotheses.