Short CommunicationPTSD and obesity in the Detroit neighborhood health study☆
Section snippets
Participants
Data were analyzed from a subsample of the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study (DNHS), a longitudinal investigation of a predominantly African American adult sample in urban Detroit [7]. The current investigation included 179 African American men and 284 African American women with BMI data.
Measures
A modified version of the PTSD Checklist–Civilian Version (PCL-C; Ref. [14]) was used to assess lifetime PTSD symptoms [1]. Lifetime PTSD cases endorsed ≥ 1 re-experiencing, ≥ 3 avoidance/numbing and ≥ 2
Descriptives
See Table 1. Participants' mean age was 56.7 years. A significantly higher proportion of women than men were obese (χ2= 35.2, df= 1, P< .001). A marginally significantly higher proportion of women than men reported lifetime PTSD (χ2= 3.5, df= 1, P= .06).
PTSD–obesity comorbidity
In Model 1, there was a marginally significant association between lifetime PTSD and obesity [odds ratio (OR)=2.3, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.0, 5.5] but not overweight (OR=1.5, 95% CI: 0.5, 4.0) among women. PTSD was not associated with
Discussion
Over half of the women in our population-based sample of African Americans were obese, compared to nearly one-third of men. Among women but not men, PTSD was associated with obesity after adjusting for covariates.
Results were consistent with previous findings that African American women are at high risk for overweight and obesity [4]. PTSD was associated with obesity among women but not men, consistent with prior studies of predominantly white European and American samples [10], [12]. Several
Acknowledgments
Karen S. Mitchell's contribution to this work was funded by a National Institute of Mental Health award K01MH093750. Allison E. Aiello's contribution to this work was funded by R01DA022720, R01DA022720-S1 and R01DA022720 (PhenX Supplement). Karestan C. Koenen's contribution to this work was funded by MH093612.
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Conflicts of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.