Cardiac Risk Marker Obesity and Psychological Background

Abstract

The psychopathology of appetite excess reveals that there are several causes of obesity; even essential obesity, constitutional obesity or obesity due to metabolic error present a plurality of factors, which makes it more difficult to understand. However, our clinical experience highlights the capital importance of prophylactic medicine. We believe, therefore, that it is essential to adopt combined treatment: psychotherapy, endocrinology, physiotherapy, nutrition
and social assistance. It is evident that in certain obese people, exercise increases polyphagia and in others it burns more calories. In the latter type, physical exercise should be prescribed. The psychotherapist with analytical training should be in a neutral position to receive both the good and the bad from the patient, but should always return the good, to enhance the individual’s security and so that he does not use somatizations. The treatment of obesity would
therefore be eclectic and, mainly, prophylactic, avoiding in the family the maladjustments of the parents that can traumatize the individual during the periods of molding. In this way, emotional confusions that cause excess appetite would be avoided. Psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic group psychotherapy and the associated diet are, nowadays, the greatest weapons available to combat this social evil, because the obese person is the victim of sarcastic and jocular attitudes, which causes disgust and unhappiness.