Psychological aspects of childhood obesity: A controlled study in a clinical and nonclinical sample

Explored the relationship between obesity and psychosocial adjustment in a combined clinical and nonclinical sample of 139 obese children and 150 non-obese children (ages from 9 to 12 years and matched for age, socioeconomic status, and gender) who filled out the Perceived Competence Scale for Children; their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist. All obese children, inde-pendent of their help-seeking status, reported more negative physical self-per-ceptions than their nonobese peers and they scored lower on general self-worth. According to their parents, the obese children of the clinical sample appeared to have more behavior problems. Findings suggest that psychopathology depends on a clinical obese status, and they provide evidence for a psychosocial at-risk profile for a subgroup of obese children. KEY WORDS: obesity; children; psychological adjustment. Research on psychosocial characteristics of childhood obesity has focused pri-marily on an undifferentiated comparison between obese and nonobese children. Studies have been limited to either clinical or nonclinical subjects but failed to 'The authors thank the reviewers for the valuable suggestions made for earlier versions of this article