نارضایتی از بدن و اذیت کردن مرتبط با وزن: مدل آسیب پذیری شناختی برای افسردگی در زنان

Although a number of studies have linked body dissatisfaction to depressive symptoms, few have done so within the framework of a vulnerability–stress model. We hypothesized that women’s levels of body dissatisfaction would interact with recent experiences of vulnerability-congruent negative life events (i.e., weight-related teasing) to predict prospective changes in depressive symptoms. Consistent with these hypotheses, experiences of weight-related teasing were more strongly related to depressive symptom increases among women with high, compared to low, levels of body dissatisfaction. These results support the hypothesis that body dissatisfaction moderates the impact of weight-related teasing on depressive symptom changes.

A growing body of research has suggested that body dissatisfaction may contribute risk for depression (e.g., Allgood-Merten et al., 1990, Fabian and Thompson, 1989, Laessle et al., 1988, Rierdan et al., 1989, Stice et al., 1998 and Thompson et al., 1995). Beginning in adolescence, rates of depression are approximately twice as high for women than for men (Hankin et al., 1998), and research suggests that body dissatisfaction contributes to elevated depression levels above and beyond other risk factors, such as body mass (Stice & Bearman, 2001). The 30-day prevalence of depression among 15–24 year old women is 8% and the lifetime prevalence is 20.8% (Blazer, Kessler, McGonagle, & Swartz, 1994). Given this, young-adult women may be an especially important group upon which to focus when examining risk for depression.