The effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the mental health of people with obesity

Abstract

AbstractObesity is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Obesity is also a risk factor for severe COVID‐19 disease and therefore may have contributed to adverse mental health outcomes in this vulnerable population during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We compare the trajectory of mental health outcomes of people with obesity with normal‐weight people before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic using nationally representative individual‐level longitudinal data from the National Health Interview Survey and Difference‐in‐Difference regressions. Our results indicate that severe anxiety increased by 2.75 (95% CI: 0.0056–0.0494; p‐value 0.014) percentage points, representing a 31.3% relative increase, and anxiety‐related prescription drug usage increased by 2.75 (95% CI: 0.0076–0.0473; p‐value<0.01) percentage points, representing a 19.2% relative increase among people with obesity, compared to normal‐weight people. We conclude that people with obesity experienced an increase in the incidence of severe anxiety and anxiety‐related prescription drug usage during the COVID‐19 pandemic, which was not observed among normal‐weight individuals. Furthermore, women, less‐educated, and rural residents with obesity disproportionately bore the burden of the pandemic.