Effects of bariatric surgery on psychological well-being among adolescents: a case series study from Turkey

Abstract

Objective: Our aim is to determine the psychiatric outcomes of bariatric surgery among adolescent patients with obesity, a condition with high psychiatric comorbidity rates. Methods: Psychiatric evaluation of the patients includes Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Eating Attitudes Test and World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) prior to surgery and at post-operative year. Results: Adolescent patients admitting for bariatric surgery have high rates of psychiatric comorbidities. We report significant improvement in psychological well-being of the adolescent patients following sleeve gastrectomy procedure including depression, anxiety and feeding behavior scores and quality of life. Discussion: Limited number of studies regarding the psychiatric outcomes of bariatric surgery on adolescent patients are present in the literature. Improvement in depression and quality of life scores have also been reported in previous studies, whereas, no comprehensive study on anxiety and feeding behavior scores, to our knowledge, had been performed. Therefore, our case series study is significant by demonstrating the psychiatric outcomes of bariatric surgery more thoroughly. In addition, higher reductions in BMI have been observed following sleeve gastrectomy procedure compared to the findings in the literature mostly including roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure in adults. We propose that psychiatric comorbidities of the adolescent patients should be more prominent determinant of decision making procedure for bariatric surgery.