FSU Researchers Find Weight Discrimination Is Linked to Increased Risk of Mortality
In recent years, Florida State University College of Medicine researchers Angelina R. Sutin and Antonio Terracciano have found that people who experience weight discrimination are more likely to become or remain obese, to develop chronic health problems and to have a lower satisfaction with life.
Now they’ve found that people who report being subjected to weight discrimination also have a greater risk of dying. Not because they may be overweight, but because of the apparent effects of the discrimination. Their findings have been published in Psychological Science.
Sutin and colleagues examined data involving more than 18,000 people from separate longitudinal studies, comparing those who reported experiencing weight discrimination with those who did not. Accounting for other factors that might explain a greater risk for mortality, the researchers found that individuals reporting weight discrimination had a 60 percent greater chance of dying over the follow-up period.
“What we found is that this isn’t a case of people with a higher body-mass index (BMI) being at an increased risk of mortality — and they happen to also report being subjected to weight discrimination,” said Sutin, assistant professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine at the medical school. “Independent of what their BMI actually is, weight discrimination is associated with increased risk of mortality.”