Sexual Abuse and its relation to Morbid Obesity

There are many reasons that can lead to obesity in people. Some people can blame it on lack of proper diet, lack of time for exercise, or growing up in an obese household and encompassing the lifestyle. While these causes pertain to outside influences, the root of extreme weight gain can be related to poor self-image and self-esteem. This can be caused by mocking during childhood, poor parenting, and unfortunately, sexual abuse.

Healthcare professionals noticed a large number of obese patients had a history of sexual abuse, which lead to difficulty with many weight loss methods. In one study, 25% of obese people acknowledged some sort of sexual abuse in their history, versus 6% in people with healthy weight. The incidences of sexual abuse tend to lead to a higher risk of becoming obese in the future. In another study, it was found that many sexually-abused obese patients would quit or sabotage their progress once they reached some sort of success with a low-calorie diet program.

Being much more common with women than with men, sexual abuse can lead to poor self-image as well as some mental problems such as depression. Patients with a history of sexual abuse viewed their weight gain as a protective shield a long with having increased levels of stress and psychopathology. Obesity can be used as a defense mechanism against further sexual abuse and is sometimes viewed as the solution, not the problem. In any case, depression has been correlated to obesity, especially morbid obesity where the Body Mass Index is higher than 40.

A study done in 1997 on 258 candidates for gastric bypass surgery found that almost 30% of them had a history of sexual abuse. 91% were women and 9% were men. After surgery and a one to two year follow-up, the study found that weight loss after gastric bypass surgery was similar in both the sexually-abused group and the non-sexually abused group. The results show that while sexual abuse can be a major cause of obesity in some people, it is not a significant factor in losing excess weight after surgery. Sexual abuse history should not be a factor in denying gastric bypass surgery, and in fact, may be a better solution for weight loss than diet and exercise programs as these patients have little success than non-abused patients.