Assessment of quality of life in obese individuals.

Introduction Recent reviews have described the potential adverse ef­ fects of obesity on quality of life (1,2). Impairments have been reported in physical functioning, including general health (3–6) and bodily pain (7), as well as in psychosocial status (8). In the latter domain, as many as 20% to 30% of individuals who seek weight reduction have been found to suffer from binge eating (9,10) or depression (11,12). Over the past 20 years, numerous instruments have been developed to assess quality of life (1,2,13,14). This article briefly reviews the meaning of this term and then examines measures that are likely to be the most useful with obese persons. Four sets of instruments are examined. The first consists of generic, broad-spectrum measures that assess multiple domains including physical, social, and vocational functioning. The second set consists of condition-specific measures that assess symptoms or experiences that are most likely to occur in patients with obesity (e.g., stigmatization, body image concerns, food preoccupation). The third and fourth sets of instruments assess depression and binge eat­ ing, respectively. We believe that these two complications should be evaluated, in addition to the more general con­ struct of quality of life.