Background: The obesity-psychological distress relationship remains controversial.
Purpose: This study aims to assess whether adolescents' psychological distress was associated with body mass index (BMI) class membership determined by latent class analysis.
Methods: Distress (anxiety, depression) and BMI were measured annually for 4 years in 1,528 adolescents. Growth mixture modeling derived latent BMI trajectory classes for models with 2-11 classes. The relationship of distress to class membership was examined in the best-fitting model using vector generalized linear regression.
Results: BMI trajectories were basically flat. The five-class model [normal weight (48.8%), overweight (36.7%), obese who become overweight (3.7%), obese (9.4%), and severely obese (1.3%)] was the preferred model (Bayesian information criterion = 22789.2, df = 31; ρ = 0.84). Greater distress was associated with higher baseline BMI and, therefore, class membership.
Conclusions: Psychological distress is associated with higher BMI class during adolescence. To determine whether distress "leads" to greater weight gain may require studies of younger populations.