Association and comparison of signs/symptoms of depression with quality of life and anthropometric measures of university employees

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the signs/symptoms of depression in university employees and to verify the relationship of these variables with quality of life and anthropometric and body composition variables. Methods: In total, 103 female employees of a university were evaluated, with a mean age between 36 and 40 years. Signs/symptoms of depression were assessed using the Beck inventory, quality of life (QoL) with the health status questionnaire (SF-36V2), and body composition with skinfolds. The anthropometric measures evaluated were weight, waist circumference (WC), and hip circumference (HC) and the body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) were calculated. Results: When evaluating women with/without signs and symptoms of depression, the groups with depression had higher BMI (∆=1.93kg/m², p=0.019) and WHR (∆=0.03, p=0.030). In the pairwise comparison, the group with severe signs/symptoms had mean scores below 50% for all QoL domains, except for functional capacity (∆=26.94, p=0.007). All QoL domains were inversely related to signs/symptoms of depression. Conclusion: Women with signs and symptoms of depression present a higher BMI, a WHR above predicted values, and worse QoL compared to those without depression.