An obese person may experience psychological effects of obesity such as loss of self-esteem and depression. It is not uncommon for obese people to feel insecure and inferior to others. A lot of obese people are reclusive and find it uncomfortable to go out with their friends. To compound the situation further, the social life of the obese person may suffer a lot because of his or her condition. Further research studies show that obese people are treated unkindly all over the world.
In most cases, obese people have trouble finding some romantic relationships. Obese women in particular have trouble finding some romance because the standard of beauty set by society today requires that a woman should be thin. Since the media uses ultra thin models to promote the idea of beauty, even women who are just slightly on the fleshy side find themselves threatened.
It is not uncommon for obese people to be discriminated against. For instance, it is not uncommon for obese people to meet some disapproving stares from people on a crowded train. In fact, some people do not have qualms about letting an obese person know that he or she is taking up more space than he or she should. In most cases, the effects of these incidents make an obese person feel more self-conscious and depressed than ever. The obese are regularly a topic of jokes and their behaviour is always looked down with contempt.
Obesity has many serious physiological problems but psycological problems in my opinion outweigh even those life threatning problems. Obese people are constantly under depression and very low self esteem.
The crowd psycology is stacked against the obese individual in so far as the popular perception is that an obese person is extremely lazy, has no control over appetite and is highly indisciplined. This somehow makes people to justify their discrimination and unkind behaviour towards the obese. But nothing can be farther than the truth.
It is important to understand that an obese person is obese not because of indiscipline, over eating or lack of controlled life style. Scientists today tell us that there are host of complex issues involved in this and that goes beyond laziness or indiscipline of the individual. Infact to argue on the contrary, the obese are extremely punctual on their exercise schedule, have perfect control over their food while on dieting and can give any disciplinarian a run for their money.
It is very sad and deeply unfortunate that the society has no conscience or empathy toward the obese and tends to "oversimplify" a medical problem into an act of indiscipline and laziness giving themselves a free right to tease, insult and pass derogatory remarks on the obese. This leads otherwise healthy but obese individuals into bouts of severe depression and very low self esteem.
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