New research from the Association for the Study of Obesity suggests that being overweight, especially during childhood, could increase the risk of developing major depression later in life. The CDC states that “the percentage of children with obesity in the U.S. has more than tripled since the 1970s,” and that “today, about one in five school-aged children (ages 6–19) has obesity.”[1] And with those added pounds comes the added risk for developing depression later in life.

The CDC defines obesity as “having excess body fat [which is] measured using the body mass index, or BMI, a widely-used screening tool for measuring both overweight and obesity…Children at or above the 95th percentile have obesity.”1 Previous studies have shown that people who are obese are a greater risk of developing depression, but the new study from the Association for the Study of Obesity closely examined the link between early-life obesity and depression risk. The study, which analyzed 889 participants, found “that being overweight at age 8 or 13 was associated with more than triple the risk of developing major depression at some point in their lives, whilst carrying excess weight over a lifetime (both as a child and as an adult) quadrupled the chance of developing depression compared to only being overweight as an adult.”[2]