Does adolescent depression predict obesity in black and white young adult women?

Abstract

Depressive symptoms in adolescence appear to be predictive of obesity and elevated BMI in early adulthood for both black and white girls, even when taking prior BMI into account, indicating that depressive symptoms confer risk for obesity above and beyond the known tracking of body weight. Obesity prevention studies might consider assessing depressive symptoms in adolescence in order to more fully capture important risk variables.