Associations Between Body Weight and Personality Disorders in a Nationally Representative Sample

Abstract

Higher-than-normal body weight is associated with paranoid, antisocial, and avoidant PDs for women, whereas overweight men have lower rates of paranoid PD and underweight women have higher odds of schizoid PD. Possible clinical implications of this research are discussed.

Personality disorders and body weight

“…Our findings for women are broadly consistent with the existing studies of PDs and body weight (Mather et al, 2008;Petry et al, 2008). However, unlike Mather et al (2008) and Petry et al (2008), we find little evidence that PDs are significantly related to body weight among men.…”

“…However, unlike Mather et al (2008) and Petry et al (2008), we find little evidence that PDs are significantly related to body weight among men. We attribute differences between our findings and those of Mather et al (2008) and Petry et al (2008) to differences in modeling approach (e.g., we regress body weight on PDs while the Mather et al (2008) and Petry et al (2008) regress PDs on body weight) and use of control variables. We extend these previous two studies in several important ways.…”

“…Although defining features of PDs (described in detail in Section 2) conceptually link these disorders with body weight, empirical evidence is scant. To the best of our knowledge, only two studies examine PDs and body weight using nationally representative data (Mather et al, 2008;Petry et al, 2008). Findings from both studies indicate a positive correlation between body weight and having a PD with the magnitude and statistical significance of the relationships varying across specific PD types.…”

“…Instead, PDs manifest early in life and thus predate adult body weight by many years. In addition, neither Mather et al (2008) nor Petry et al (2008) examine the full set of PDs recognized by the APA (schizotypal, narcissistic, and borderline PDs are not available in their data sets) nor do they consider heterogeneity across PD type. Moreover, these studies rely on self-reported weight and height without correcting for the potential measurement error contained in self-reports, particularly for overweight and obese individuals (Cawley and Burkhauser, 2006;Rowland, 1990).…”

“…Although these studies are important and interesting, several key questions remain unanswered. Specifically, both Mather et al (2008) and Petry et al (2008) regress PD outcomes on measures of body weight. Because PDs develop early in life and are persistent, however, the implied direction of causality in these studies is counter to the psychiatric understanding of PDs.…”