JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Adolescence is a critical period transforming from childhood to adulthood with dramatic changes in physical and psychosocial health. They are vulnerable to both depression and adiposity, but their trajectories in combination over time and whether sex differences exist remained unclear.

Objective:

To first identify the population heterogeneity in the joint trajectories of depressive symptoms and body mass index (BMI) from adolescence to early adulthood and then explore the sex differences in the joint trajectories.

Methods:

In this study, we adopt the latent class trajectory modeling to identify the combined trajectories of depressive symptoms and BMI among adolescents aged 10-19 years from a longitudinal study (2010-2020y). We used the multinomial logistic regressions to examine the sexualized associations with the trajectory classifications.

Results:

Our results found that individuals’ depressive symptoms and BMI might not always change parallelly from adolescence to early adulthood, instead, some individuals appeared to be prone to depressive symptoms or elevated BMI only while others were multimorbid by both of them. Moreover, our study identified a clear sexualized pattern in the joint trajectories of depressive symptoms and BMI: the females were at a higher risk of developing depressive symptoms but remained relatively stable weight status over time, while the males were at a lower risk of developing depressive symptoms but with an increasing risk of developing adiposity over time.

Conclusions:

Adolescents’ depressive symptoms and BMI might not always change parallelly, and there is a clear sexualized pattern in the joint trajectories of depressive symptoms and BMI. This enabled us to design future sex-based interventions that match the distinguished profiles in males and females’ adolescents, thus achieving the aim of maximizing the intervention effects in preventing both depression and adiposity for adolescents.