The Relationship of Psychological Symptoms among Mothers of Children in Different Body Mass Index Categories

Abstract

We tried to emphasize the importance of psychological status analysis of the mothers of children, who have abnormal Body Mass Index (BMI), when treating these children. Materials and methods: Our study enrolled mothers of 150 children in normal, high and low BMI categories who were admitted to Kagithane State Hospital. The inclusion criteria required that these children had no chronic disease, developmental defect, and diagnosed psychological or physical disease impairing the reliability of the interview. Symptom Check List (SCL-90-R) and Beck Depression Scale (BDS) were used on all mothers of these children. In this study, BDS values of high BMI children’s mothers were significantly higher than those of normal BMI children’s mothers and BDS values of mothers of low BMI children were found to be higher than those of mothers of normal BMI children. The SCL-90-R results between mothers of high and normal BMI, high and low BMI, normal and low BMI children were statistically significant. We observed the effect of the psychological state of the family on childhood eating habits and the higher incidence of childhood feeding problems in families with psychopathology. Currently family therapy is indicated according to guidelines in solving eating disorders in children. This approach may also be useful for children with abnormal BMI.