English Abstract
The Impact of Obesity on Some Mental Health Variables among Middle School Students in the Kingdom of Bahrain :
The study aimed to identify the impact of obesity on the level of body image, self-esteem and depression among ordinary students and obesity students, both males and females. The study sample consisted of (100) male and female students and was divided equally between the ordinary and the overweight sub samples. The study used the following tools:
Body Image Avoidance Questionnaire (BIAQ) introduced by Rosen et al. (1991), translated to Arabic by Majdi Mohammed al- Desouki (2001).
The Index of Self-Esteem (ISE) introduced by Hudson (1994), translated to Arabic by Magdi El-Desouki (2001),
The Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD) introduced by Zimmerman et al. (1994), translated to Arabic by Magdi El-Desouki (2001),
The results showed a statistically significant effect of obesity on the following variables:
- Obesity has an impact on body image. Results showed that individuals with normal body weight had a better body image. There was no difference between males and females.
Obesity has an impact on self-esteem. Results showed that individuals with normal body weight had a better self-esteem. The results also showed that males had better self-esteem than females.
Obesity has an impact on depression. Results showed that obese individuals had higher depression rates than others. In addition, it has been found that females had significantly higher rates of depression than males.
