Psychiatric disorders of patients seeking obesity treatment

Subjects were retrospectively recruited from an obesity treatment center in Taiwan. The obesity treatments included bariatric surgery and non-surgery treatment. All subjects underwent a standardized clinical evaluation with two questionnaires and a psychiatric referral when needed. The psychiatric diagnosis was made thorough psychiatric clinic interviews using the SCID. A total of 841 patients were recruited. We compared the difference in psychiatric disorder prevalence between patients with surgical and non-surgical treatment.Of the 841 patients, 42% had at least one psychiatric disorder. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders and eating disorders were the most prevalent categories of psychiatric disorders. Females had more mood disorders and eating disorders than males. The surgical group had more binge-eating disorder, adjustment disorder, and sleep disorders than the non-surgical group.A high prevalence of psychiatric disorders was found among ethnic Chinese seeking obesity treatment. This is consistent with study results in the US and Europe.Obesity is becoming an important issue for health promotion. The World Health Organization estimated that around 1.5 billion adults were overweight (body mass index, BMI ≧ 25 kg/m2) and about 500 million people were obese (BMI ≧ 30 kg/m2) in 2008. In the United States (US), about 34% of people are obese [1]. Obese and overweight people have a higher risk of chronic physical illness, such as cardiovascular disease [2], stroke, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension [3]. The relationship between obesity and mental health is also considered important. In a community-based study, obesity was positively associated with several mental disorders, especially mood disorders and anxiety disorders [4]. Simon et al. [5] investigated 9125 representative samples in the US, and found that obesity was associated with significant increases in lifetime diagnoses of major depression, bipolar disorder, and panic disorder or agoraphobia. Scott et al. f