More than sixty percent of the urban adolescents in Bangladesh are suffering from moderate to severe levels of stress, a study has found.
The physical and mental health of adolescents in the country was already in a precarious state even before coronavirus broke out; the situation in the last two years only deteriorated further, said the report by Bangladeshi scientists, titled, “Perceived stress, eating behavior, and overweight and obesity among urban adolescents”.
The report was published in the 17 December issue of the international science journal “Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition”.
Funded by The health department’s Non-Communicable Disease Control Programme, the research was jointly conducted by Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation (BBF), Government Public Health Institute, International Center for Diarrhea Research Bangladesh (icddr,b), Department of Statistics, Jahangirnagar University and Department of Community Medicine, Rajshahi Medical College.
SK Roy, a nutritionist and professor at Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation, led the study. The study was conducted on adolescents from January to June 2019.
According to the report, major 61.5% of adolescents were in moderate-to-extremely-severe levels of stress, 28.2% were overweight or obese, only 2.7% had a very active lifestyle, and 30.5% had a sedentary lifestyle.
“Perceived stress was positively and significantly correlated with eating behaviors and body mass index, whereas physical activity was significantly associated with the prevalence of overweight/obesity and high stress. The prevalence of overweight/obesity (53.8%) and high stress (52.5%) was higher in males,” the report said.
It also added: “Adolescents’ obesity was 2.212 times more likely who had a sedentary lifestyle, 1.13 times more likely for those who had experienced stress due to school/leisure conflict, and 1.634 times more likely for those who were tempted by restrained eating behavior.”
Citing data from the National Mental Health System in Bangladesh, the report said that 16.1% of the adult population (aged 18 years or older) of Bangladesh suffer from some form of mental disorder.
“BMI (body mass index) was significantly correlated with stress. Most of the studies have indicated that eating behaviors are linked to the BMI, nature of food, and psychological outcomes such as depression, anxiety, or body esteem. Increasing physical activity and reducing food intake are widely advocated as the treatment of choice for obesity in all age groups,” it added.
“In recent decades, research has shown the negative impact of stress in adolescence, associating it with the presence of internalised or externalised symptomatology and with lower levels of life satisfaction. During adolescence, the levels of stress increase significantly. Adolescents are highly stressed about school performance and attendance, future uncertainty, school/leisure conflict, home life, emerging adult responsibility, romantic pressure,” the report said.
“School-related stresses are regarded as an important source of adolescent stress,”the report remarked, suggesting that children now-edays have “become the unwilling, unintended victim of overwhelming stress; the stress borne of rapid, bewildering social change and constantly rising expectations.”
The research stated that psychological stress has been hypothesised to be linked with weight gain through a variety of mechanisms, including effects on behavior and emotional reactions such as “comfort eating”. Stress on secondary school-and-college-going students needs to be recognised, and strategies need to be developed to improve adolescents’ mental health, the researchers recommended.
In 2017, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report on increasing investment or funding for adolescent health. The WHO report said that adolescents are entitled to good health. Investing in the health of adolescents brings three times the benefits.
