Childhood Obesity – Low Self-Esteem

CanWest News

Obesity not only harms a child’s body, but it also causes significant psychological damage to children as young as 10, a large new Canadian study shows.

The study, based on a nationally representative sample of 10 and 11-year olds, found that obese children had almost twice the odds of reporting low self-esteem when compared to normal-weight kids.

And those whose self-esteem was low at the start of the study were more than three times as likely to feel bad about themselves four years later, when they were teens.

Doctors say the findings are troubling on several counts. Low self-esteem increases the risk of anxiety, sadness, loneliness, nervousness and depression, and makes children more vulnerable to drug and alcohol abuse and “self-destructive” behaviour, including suicidal thinking, when they are older.

As well, many parents don’t recognize when their kids are overweight. Even when their child is obese, one third of mothers and more than half of fathers in one British study saw their child’s weight as “about right.”

Some parents are reluctant to admit a weight problem in their children, because many are overweight themselves. Others think that with so many other people around them getting fatter, being overweight is normal.

According to the new report by Statistics Canada, childhood overweight has become “pandemic” and prevalence rates continue to rise. In 1978-79, 12 per cent of two to 17-year-olds were overweight, and three per cent were obese — a combined overweight/obesity rate of 15 per cent.

By 2004, the overweight rate for this age group was 18 per cent (an estimated 1.1 million), and eight per cent were obese (about half a million), for a combined rate of 26 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

The heavier kids are as children, the more likely they are to grow into fat adults and face an early death from heart disease, stroke and other weight-related diseases.

Pediatricians are already seeing an alarming rise in Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and “non-alcoholic” fatty liver disease in children.

It seems intuitive that obese children are more likely to suffer low self esteem. But the new study is one of few to measure the mental health consequences of childhood obesity.

The survey began in 1994-95 with 2,879 children aged 10 and 11. All completed a self-esteem scale that included questions such as: “In general, I like the way I am,” and “A lot of things about me are good.”

Obese kids were more likely than non-obese kids to have low self-esteem.

The children were re-interviewed two years later, when they were 12 and 13, and four years later, when they were 14 and 15. Even when other factors were taken into account, such as school performance, family income, education, and how much time they spent in front of a television or computer screen each day, “baseline body weight was independently associated with self-esteem in subsequent years,” according to the Statistics Canada report. The association was strongest in girls.

The researchers also set out to answer the question: Does excess weight affect self-esteem, or are kids with low self-esteem more likely to get fat?

“It’s not self-esteem that predicts obesity, it’s the reverse,” says Julie Bernier, chief analyst at Statistics Canada.

The finding means that “really early in life, we should be concerned about obesity problems in kids,” she said.

According to the study, children who participated in physical activity five to seven times a week were less likely than those participating no more than twice a week to have low self-esteem four years later.

But many overweight children withdraw from sports, either because they can’t do them so easily, or think they can’t, or they’re too embarrassed to run, says Dr. Glen Berall, chief of pediatrics at Toronto’s North York General Hospital.

“We see teasing. We see body image sensitivities. We see kids who won’t go swimming because they don’t want to take off their shirts,” Berall says. “We see an impact on marks with self-esteem

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