Depression, submissive behaviors and negative automatic thoughts in obese Turkish adolescents

In this study, depression, submissive social behaviors, and frequency of automatic negative thoughts in obese and normal weight Turkish adolescents were investigated. Their depression levels, submissive social behaviors, and negative automatic thoughts were measured using the Children's Depression Inventory (Kovacs, 1985, adapted by Oy, 1991), the Submissive Acts Scale (Gilbert and Allan, 1984, adapted by Sahin and Sahin, 1992b), and the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (Hollon and Kendall, 1980, adapted by Aydýn and Aydýn, 1990 and Sahin and Sahin, 1992a) respectively. To compare two group averages of the test scores, Mann-Whitney U statistics were employed. Results indicated that the depression level of the obese group was higher than the normal weight group's level. There was no significant difference in the means of the Submissive Acts Scale and the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire scores between the obese group and the normal weight group. The findings of this study suggest that there is an association between adolescent obesity and depression for Turkish adolescents.