Perceived rather than actual overweight is associated with mental health problems in adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Overweight and perceived overweight are common among adolescents. The nature of the relationship between overweight/perceived overweight and mental health problems is still unclear.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to examine whether actual overweight, perceived overweight or both are associated with internalizing and externalizing disorders among adolescents.

METHODS: Data were collected by two similar school surveys in all Finnish-speaking secondary schools in Tampere (population 200,000) in the academic years 2002-2003 and 2012-2013. A total of 2775 acceptable responses were received. All the analyses were carried out separately for girls and boys. Mean age of the respondents was 15.6 years.

RESULTS: In multivariate analyses perceived overweight, not actual weight, was significantly associated with higher risk of self-reported depression (OR: 4.3, 95% CI: 2.9-6.3, p < .001) and self-reported conduct disorder (OR: 2.3, 95% CI: 1.6-3.3, p < .001) in girls and with higher risk of self-reported depression (OR: 3.26, 95% CI: 1.65-6.4, p = .001) and self-reported social phobia (OR: 2.4, 95% CI: 1.0-5.6, p = .05) in boys.

CONCLUSION: Perceived overweight rather than actual weight status is associated with both internalizing and externalizing mental health problems in adolescents.