dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to investigate if baseline measures of depression, gender, weight group, and age in overweight and obese women predicted weight change over five years as compared to men. A secondary purpose of this study was to examine if depressive symptoms were positively correlated with weight change over five years. This study was a secondary analysis of archival data from the RENO Diet-Heart study (St. Jeor, 1997). The current study focused on women but used men as a comparison group. To screen for a homogeneous healthy sample, potential subjects were excluded if they reported a diagnosis of depression during the last five years, suffered from depressive symptoms within the last five years, or took antidepressants. The predictor variables for this study included depression scores (using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale, or CES-D) (Radloff 1997), gender, weight group (normal weight, overweight, and obese based on current standards for body mass index), and age upon study entry. Obese subjects were in the minority for both females (26.9%) and males (23.9%). A hierarchical linear mixed model method was used to analyze data to predict weight change over time. Results indicated that depressive symptoms significantly contributed to weight gain over five years among obese women and obese men. In addition, twenty year-old women and men gained the most weight over time despite subclinical CES-D scores. Future research is needed to examine if depressive symptoms are related to obesity, especially among younger people. | en_US |