Obesity Among Adolescents in Australia: A Systematic Review

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Obesity Among Adolescents in Australia: A Systematic Review

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Introduction
Evidence on Topic
 Today, the prevention of Adolescent obesity has become on a high priority all over the
world due to the adverse health consequences in adolescence as well as in the later life.
World Health Organization has suggested that prevention efforts are needed at the
community level first in order to fulfill the multi-dimensional and complex type of
obesity.
 The current researches have also proven that there is a positive relation among obesity
and unhealthy mental status (Hoare et al., 2015). Unhealthy diets along with physical
activities have been found to affect the mental well-being of adults. The compelling facts
also suggest that harmful factors associated with weight gain are bi-directionally linked to
the frequent mental health disorders.
 In many developing nations, there is evidence that people with repeated or chronic
episodes of depression are at more risk of becoming obese. Evidences from Australia
have revealed that obese adults are exposed to 56% increased risk of depression over time
(Wang et al., 2015). On the other hand, depressed persons have been found to have a 59%
increased risk of developing obesity.
 However, Obesity treatment programs in many parts of the world including Australia
have been bringing positive psychological results for children and youths.

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What motivated this review?
Various researches have been carried out as to why obesity could result in bad mental health in
adolescents. However, only a few systematic reviews have been conducted in this health area in
context of Australia. Also, hardly any study focuses on the direct impact of obesity on
psychological well-being of adults. Therefore, this systematic review has been done to find out
the reasons for increasing obesity among adolescents in the developed country, Australia. It also
develops a better understanding about the common causes of obesity and how these affect the
mental as well as physical wellbeing among young people (Ogden et al., 2016). Furthermore, this
review would also facilitate policy makers to develop future interventions.
Methods
Search Strategy
The journals for this review are taken from World Health, CINAHL, Health Source, PsycINFO,
Nursing & Academic Edition, PsycARTICLES, and MEDLINE. All these have been accessed
via EBSCOhost. Also, the similar research has been conducted on the Cochrane Database in
order to confirm that the full texts of articles are qualified. In addition to this, mental wellbeing
outcomes among adolescents’ are illustrated in depth. The reference lists of articles and papers
sourced for this systematic review were verified by the three independent authors so as to take all
related articles for future reading selection (Rivera et al., 2014). The identified dissimilarities in
study choice were also resolved by a third party. Furthermore, some searches were also carried
out using Google Scholar on the research topic. However, this search strategy has been confined
to the peer-reviewed documents which were available from the database initiation through
September, 2013.