Obesity - a mental illness?

Here's an interesting article: "Mental woes common in weight-loss surgery patients" that talks about the high incidence of mental illness among the obese and super obese. As high as 2/3 of all obese people have suffered one or more incident of mental illness (most depression I suspect) in their lives.

I think this is of interest in as much as if you're fat - you'll be sad and eventually you might become sad enough, for long enough that you actually trigger depression (which is deeper than just sadness). Some studies have suggested that this is possible.

Another thought on this would be - is depression or other mental illnesses a CO-symptom of obesity? Read: something is wrong with your brain in general so it makes you obese, shows signs of mental illness, etc? Perhaps these are just all symptoms of the same imbalances in the brain, or a cascading effect that affects all areas of the brain in different ways. If this is the case then WLS would just be a large, invasive and yet necessary band-aid for the underlying problem is not being addressed.

Some would say it's "the addiction" that is not being addressed. Well, addiction is a mental illness of sorts too isn't now? Something to think about. Perhaps there will be a pill some day that you take daily and it changes your brain chemistry back to 'normal' so you're not obese and not depressed either!