• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Depression, Obesity, Alcohol Abuse Linked In Women

Posted on: Monday, 28 September 2009, 06:10 CDT

According to the results of a new study, problems with alcohol abuse, depression and obesity in young women may not be as unrelated as once thought.

Results of the roughly 20-year research project, conducted at the Children’s Research Institute in Seattle, found that nearly 50 percent of the men and women examined in the study were affected by one or more of these three problems between the ages of 21 and 30.

Lead researcher Dr. Carolyn A. McCarty told Reuters “That’s big.”  Moreover, McCarty explained that because of the relatively rigid criteria used by her team to define problems like alcohol abuse and depression, their research likely only represents “the tip of the iceberg.”

For the study, McCarty’s team followed a group of young men and women from the time they were in fifth grade in 1985 until they were 30.  Interviews were intermittently conducted with the participants over the years, and interviews done during their 20’s were analyzed in depth in an attempt to elucidate the connections between depression, obesity and alcohol abuse.

At 21, they found that some 8 percent of women and 12 percent of men had already developed at least two of the disorders.  Curiously, however, as the participants aged, the likelihood of having more than one of the problems increased in women while it decreased in men.

Observable associations for the men studied were sparse at best.  The only pattern that the researchers were able to detect was that men who were obese and depressed at 27 years of age were less likely to be depressed by the time they were 30.

Women, on the other hand, demonstrated a number of recurrent trends.  For example, those who suffered from depression at age 27 were more than three times more likely to abuse alcohol by the time they were 30.  Also, women with alcohol abuse problem at age 24 were almost four times likelier to be obese by age 27, which in turn doubled their risk of developing depression by age 30.

In an interview discussing the results of the study, Dr. McCarty said that a proclivity towards “ruminative coping”—whereby a person chronically dwells on and obsesses about negative life events—was one of the most common traits observed in patients with one or more of the three problems.

Yale psychologist Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksma refers to the connection between “eating, drinking and overthinking” as the “toxic triangle”, and has attempted to demonstrate that  men and women who engage in ruminative coping tend to drink heavily and/or binge eat as means of dealing with their problems.

The good news, according to McCarty, is that there are a number of different strategies for dealing with all of these problems that have been well-researched and time-tested.  Regular exercise, stress management training and counseling all offer ways to retrain the brain’s “reward system” and help ailing individuals to avoid unhealthy forms of stress management, such as overeating and excess alcohol consumption.

“We have to think about how people can start to build in naturally rewarding experiences in their lives,” advises McCarty.

Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

More News in this Category