the relationship between the satisfaction of body image and self-esteem among obese adolescents in abadan, iran

objectives: adolescence is a period of life in which the individuals face many mental problems concerned with mental body image. obesity could be the cause of dissatisfaction and makes adolescents’ self-esteem to decrease. this study aimed to examine the adolescents’ satisfaction of their body image correlated to their self-esteem. materials and methods: in this cross-sectional study all of the boy and girl students (n=8,510) aged 15-17 in abadan high schools were examined for their body mass index (bmi). students with bmi above 95% were selected as the research sample. instruments of the study included: (1) the multidimensional body-self relations questionnaire (mbsrq) and (2) the cooper smith self-esteem questionnaire. individuals’ data also included age, gender, education, parents’ education and parents’ work. data were analyzed using spss version 17. descriptive and inferential statistics including chi-square (χ2), pearson and spearman correlation analyses were used. results: the prevalence of obesity among the adolescents aged 15-17 years was 5.99%. obese adolescents could be divided into the categories of low (42.2%), moderate (43.9%) and high (13.9%). low and high self-esteem was found in 63.3% and 36.7% of fat adolescents, respectively. there were significant relationships between the satisfaction of body image with self-esteem (p<0.001) and with bmi (r=-0.093, p=0.036) among fat adolescents. conclusion: obesity could be one of the main factors decreasing adolescents’ body image and consequently their self-esteem. encouraging adolescents to do the exercises and healthy diet could prevent this problem. further research may be done on this issue around iran.