Imagem corporal e mal-estar psicológico: estudo longitudinal de avaliação nutricional de adolescentes ELANA

Abstract

Introduction: The psychological well-being in adolescence is regarded as the adolescent s degree of personal satisfaction with his quality of life and health. Sociocultural influences and biopsychosocial changes, inherent in this stage of life, exacerbate concerns and predispose to the occurrence of inadequate nutritional status, distortion and dissatisfaction with body image, bringing low levels of psychological well-being in adolescents and compromise their health. Objective: To evaluate the role of weight status and body image in the occurrence of low levels of psychological well-being in adolescents according to sex. Methods: This longitudinal study was conducted with 793 adolescent students from public and private schools in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, with 428 boys and 365 girls (baseline - first phase of the study), aged between 10 and 19. In order to evaluate the adolescents psychological well-being, the "psychological well-being" domain of Kidscreen instrument (27 questions) was used. The self-perceived body image was assessed by the Body Silhouette Scale for adolescents and the assessment of nutritional status was determined by the body mass index. The study followed adolescents for four consecutive years, and data collection was held in years 2010-2013, through the application of self-administered questionnaires to adolescents and gauging their anthropometric measurements (body mass and height). Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was performed in order to verify the degree of association between variables, and the significance level of p <0.05 for all tests was considered. All analyzes were stratified according to sex. Results: The results of the study baseline demonstrated associations between self-perception of body image, body image distortion and dissatisfaction with body image with regard to overweight and low levels of psychological well-being in girls, even after adjustment for possible confounders (age, sexual maturity, type of school, alcohol consumption and physical activity). In the longitudinal analysis, these results lost their statistical significance. Overweight and obesity were not associated with low levels of psychological well-being among the surveyed adolescents. Conclusion: This study contributes to a better understanding of the factors associated with mental health in adolescence, underscoring the need to consider the difference between sex in relation not only to overweight, but the perception of body image in weight control programs in children and adolescents