Trajectories of aggressive and depressive symptoms in male and female overweight children: Do they share a common path or do they follow different routes?

Abstract

The prevalence of childhood overweight is a major social and public health issue, and primary assessment should focus on early and middle childhood, because weight gain in these phases constitutes a strong predictor of subsequent negative outcomes. Studies on community samples have shown that growth curves may follow linear or non-linear trajectories from early to middle childhood, and can differ based on sex. Overweight children may exhibit a combination of physiological and psychosocial issues, and several studies have demonstrated an association between overweight and internalizing/externalizing behavior. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of longitudinal studies on depressive and aggressive symptoms in children with high BMI. This study adopted a growth curve modeling over three phases to: (1) describe BMI trajectories in two groups of children aged 2–8 (overweight and normal weight) from a community sample; (2) describe the developmental trajectories of children’s aggressive and depressive symptoms from 2 to 8 years of age. Results indicate higher BMI in 2-year-old girls, with males catching up with them by age 8. While overweight females’ BMIs were consistently high, males’ increased at 5 and 8 years. The mean scores for aggressive symptoms at T1 (2 years of age) were the same in all subjects, but a significant deviation occurred from T1 to T2 in both samples, in divergent directions. With regards to children’s depressive symptoms, the two groups had different starting points, with normal weight children scoring lower than overweight youths. Overweight females showed lower depressive scores than overweight males at T1, but they surpassed boys before T2, and showed more maladaptive symptoms at T3. This study solicits professionals working in pediatric settings to consider overweight children’s psychopathological risk, and to be aware that even when children’s BMI does not increase from 2 to 8 years, their psychopathological symptoms may grow in intensity.

A 9-year longitudinal study on trajectories of aggressive and depressive symptoms in male and female children with overweight

“…To respond to these gaps in the literature, this study aimed to examine the developmental trajectories of emotional-behavioral functioning in a sample of children with overweight and normal-weight peers matched for socio-demographic characteristics. In a previous study, we reported the trajectories of these two groups over three waves (2, 5, 8 years of age) and did not include pubertal age [15]. Thus, we could not verify possible variations in the trajectories of weight status in males and females, which have been posited to occur in children around the age of 10/11 years of age, as indicated by Dunger et al [16].…”

“…Therefore, we chose items from both versions of the CBCL known to have greater developmental invariance and identifying “core” aspects of internalizing and externalizing syndromes that are developmentally appropriate and phenotypically expressed from preschool to puberty [20]. Consequently, we created subsets named “Depression” and “Aggression”, as further described here [15].…”

<p>Relation of personality factors and life events to waist/height ratio and percentage of visceral fat in women and men</p>

“…Body mass index contributes to the prediction of decreased quality of life. This relation has been confirmed repetitively for low physical movement 49–55. This association can be bidirectional.…”

“…There is a connection between internalizing/externalizing behavior in children and overweight. Ceniglia et al,49 study employed a growth curve modeling over three age points (2, 5, and 8 years) in community sample to: (1) show body mass index trajectories in two subgroups of children (normal weight and overweight) aged from two to eight years; (2) show the developmental trajectories of children’s depressive and aggressive symptoms. Whereas overweight girls’ body mass index was constantly high, boys’ enlarged at the age of five and eight.…”

Cross‐lagged associations between behaviour problems and obesity in head start preschoolers

“…For example, Chilean boys aged 1 to 5 years with overweight, compared to boys with normal weight, showed concurrently less internalizing behaviour; this association was not present in girls . Conversely, girls with overweight/obesity had fewer depressive symptoms than boys with overweight/obesity at ages 2 to 3 years, with a developmental increase in both aggressive and depressive symptoms between ages 5 and 8, surpassing boys with overweight . These findings may suggest, for example, that girls become attuned to social stigma about weight during the preschool years that may in turn increase risk for externalizing and internalizing behaviours …”