The association between excess weight and self-rated health and psychological distress in women in Spain.

Objective: To investigate the associations between obesity and self-rated health and psychological well-being in Spanish women.

Design: Cross-sectional study. Three dependent variables were defined: self-rated health; self-declared diagnosis of psychiatric disorders or use of psychiatric drugs; and General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) score. A set of variables (sociodemographic, morbidity and lifestyle) were used to adjust for possible confounding effects.

Setting: The National Health Survey was conducted in Spain in 2006.

Subjects: A total of 15 099 women aged ≥18 years. Participants were classified into groups according to their BMI.

Results: In all, 55·4 % of the women had normal weight, 29·4 % were overweight and 15·2 % were obese. Self-perception of poor health in obese women was 57·8 %, a significantly higher value than in women of normal weight (28·8 %). Prevalence of psychiatric disease was 35·5 % in obese women and 18·9 % in women of normal weight. In multivariate analysis, obese women had 34 % higher odds of declaring poor self-perception of health (OR = 1·34; 95 % CI 1·12, 1·61), 18 % higher odds of self-reporting psychiatric disease (OR = 1·18; 95 % CI 1·02, 1·38) and 26 % higher odds (OR = 1·26; 95 % CI 1·02, 1·55) of having an abnormal outcome (≥3) on the GHQ-12 than women of normal weight.

Conclusions: The present study highlights that obese Spanish women have worse self-rated health and psychological health than those with normal weight. These aspects are relevant because of the growing importance placed on the functionality of patients and their mental health within the obesity epidemic.