Participation and Motivation in Obesity Treatment – A Qualitative Study of Teenagers’ and Parents’ Perceptions

Family therapy has been shown to have some effect on overweight among children and adolescents [5,9-12]. These studies have demonstrated behaviour change and some weight loss after a few sessions. Nevertheless, merely advice to families within a primary care context seems to be too small effort to produce lasting results [13]. Some studies have showed better outcome when only parents received group support in combination with dietary information [14-16]. Other highlights the importance of active involvement of parents and children to succeed with overweight/obesity treatment [17,18]. Especially adolescents need individual support in the behaviour change process and together with parents in parallel. It is important, however, that the responsibility for change is not only put on the children/adolescents [17]. Previous studies about teenagers’ experiences of being overweight have reported that they feel lonely, are in need of support from their parents and are searching for a context in their daily lives [19].