Body size, mental health, and inequality: A life course approach

Investigating the social and developmental origins and consequences of overweight and obesity, negative body image, disordered eating, and impaired psychological wellbeing in South Africa and Sweden

Project period

January 2018 – 31 January 2021

Project Summary

This research project, conducted between 2018 and early 2021, investigated the social and developmental origins and consequences of overweight and obesity, negative body image, disordered eating, and impaired psychological wellbeing. It did so across the life course, and across generations, of parents and children in South Africa and Sweden.

In focussing on improving understandings of the role psychological wellbeing plays in the development of overweight and obesity, special attention was paid to identifying modifiable risk factors and social determinants of health, such as socio-demographic characteristics, family and social environment and social mobility – identified as possible factors in mediating and/or moderating the relationship between body mass index and psychological wellbeing across life courses. Sub-studies included:

investigating the socio-demographic and early life determinants of overweight and obesity among men and women across a range of different policy and social contexts;
quantifying the social and health consequences of overweight and obesity among men and women from different socio-economic groups;
investigating the role of body image and poor psychological health for body size trajectories across different stages of the life course;
exploring the long-term health and reproductive outcomes of disordered eating; and
testing whether effects on body size and mental health of social or health disadvantage and social mobility are transmitted differentially through maternal and paternal lines.

The project used existing complementary information from surveys, cohort studies and register data linkages in South Africa, Sweden and Australia, and applied methods from life course and social epidemiology.

Preliminary findings were presented at the 2018 National Nutrition Congress.

The project was undertaken in partnership with the South African Human Sciences Research Council and two Swedish educational institutes: Stockholm University and the Karolinska Institut. It was jointly financed by the South African Medical Research Council and the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE).