title: Associations between obesity and mental distress in late midlife: results from a large Danish community sample.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To examine associations of Body mass Index (BMI) and mental distress in late midlife in a large Danish community sample and to investigate the effect of socio-demographic factors.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study sample comprised 3613 Danish men and 1673 women aged 49-63 years from the Copenhagen Ageing and Midlife Biobank (CAMB) with complete information on measured BMI, severity of mental symptoms assessed by the Symptom Check-List' (SCL-90), and socio-demographic factors including sex, age, occupational social class, and educational duration. Linear and logistic regression were used to evaluate associations between BMI category and SCL-90.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Unadjusted SCL-90 subscale scores differed significantly across BMI categories (p< 0.001) among both men and women with more mental distress in the underweight, obese and severely obese BMI categories except for the anxiety scale which was not associated with BMI category in women. In the adjusted analyses, all symptom scales remained significantly associated with BMI among men after adjusting for socio-demographic factors while only associations with somatization and depression scales remained significant for women.. When SCL-90 case status was applied as an outcome, significant unadjusted associations with BMI category were observed for somatization (p< 0.001), depression (p= 0.026) and the General Severity Index (p= 0.002) among men and somatization (p= 0.002) among women. Furthermore, somatization case-status was significantly predicted by BMI category (p< 0.001) in men after adjusting for socio-demographic factors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Results indicate more mental distress among underweight, obese and severely obese men and women after adjusting for socio-demographic factors. Furthermore, obese men have higher risk of reporting clinically relevant symptoms of somatization independently of socio-demographic factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, Medical Psychology Unit, University of Copenhagen, Center for Healthy Aging, Østerfarimagsgade 5A, Building 5, 1. Floor, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
authors.forename: Cathrine Lawaetz
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8718-1654
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Wimmelmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Rikke
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lund
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Ulla
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Research Center for Prevention and Health, Glostrup Hospital, Glostrup, Denmark ; Danish Aging Research Center, Universities of Aarhus, Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Merete
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Osler
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Erik Lykke
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Mortensen
keywords: BMI; Danish population; Mental distress; Obesity; Psychology; SCL-90; Socio-demographic factors