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0:00
My name is Dr. Samantha Scholtz.
I am a consultant
liaison psychiatrist,
and I work in
the Imperial Weight Centre
in Saint Mary's Hospital
seeing patients before
and after bariatric surgery.
I'm going to be speaking
today about obesity
and the interaction
between obesity
and psychology
and the psychiatry field.
0:19
Obesity has reached
epidemic proportions in the UK.
0:25
Approximately
25 percent of the population
falls within the obese category
and 66 percent falls
within the overweight category.
0:36
The foresight report from 2009
commissioned
by the Department of Health
showed that by 2050
should there be no change
in the current trends,
we would expect that
approximately 60 percent
of the population
would fall within
the obese category.
What this tells me
is not so much
that there is a problem with
obesity on an individual level,
but that as a society
we are living within
an obesogenic environment
which is creating
a problem of obesity
on an individual level.
1:08
I would like
to make the statement
that I think that there is
no psychology of severe obesity.
What we see instead are severe
psychological consequences
from obesity and resulting
stigmatization of patients
who have obesity.
There are however some eating
behaviors and personality traits
associated with obesity,
but it is difficult to determine
whether these
are cause or effect.
1:31
There is a strong interaction
between serious
mental illness and obesity.
1:37
Patients with
serious mental illness,
for instance, like schizophrenia
or bipolar affective disorder
have much higher
rates of obesity
than the average population.
Approximately
50 to 60 percent of women
with serious mental illness
will be suffering of obesity.
The association with obesity
and depression is bidirectional.
By this I mean
that patients with obesity
are more likely
to suffer with depression.
But it may also be
that some aspects of depression
leads to increased obesity.
We know that if patients
with serious mental illness
have obesity
that they're more likely to die
from their physical ill health
than from mental health causes.
Therefore, the consequences
of obesity in patients
with serious mental illness
are quite severe.
