“In order to find out which illness typically appeared prior and subsequently to the obesity diagnosis, we had to develop a new method. This allowed us to determine whether there are trends and typical patterns in the occurrence of diseases,” explains Dervic.
In case of all co-diagnoses, with the exception of the psychosis spectrum, obesity was in all likelihood the first diagnosis made prior to the manifestation of a psychiatric diagnosis. “Until now, physicians often considered psychopharmacological medications to cause the association between mental disorders and obesity as well as diabetes. This may be true for schizophrenia, where we see the opposite time order, but our data does not support this for depression or other psychiatric diagnoses,” explains Alexander Kautzky of Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Medical University Vienna.
However, whether obesity directly affects mental health or whether early stages of psychiatric disorders are inadequately recognised is not yet known.