Personality, weight loss and obesity-related well-being post-bariatric surgery.

PURPOSE

The aim of the study was to examine the associations between personality, weight loss and obesity-related well-being post-bariatric surgery. It was hypothesised that persons who had undergone bariatric surgery who exhibit Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Intellect/Imagination will have greater obesity-related well-being; whereas, those low on Emotional stability will have poorer obesity well-being.

METHOD

The cross-sectional sample comprised 127 females who had received bariatric surgery. The average age of participants was 45 years. Quality of life was measured using the Obesity-Related Well-Being scale (ORWELL 97). Personality was assessed with the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) 50-item measure of the Five-Factor Model.

RESULTS

The mean BMI for the sample was 34.13 (SD = 7.8). Females with a larger BMI who had undergone bariatric surgery had lower obesity-related well-being. Conscientiousness was negatively associated with BMI. Separate Hierarchical regression analyses found that Emotional stability (Beta =  - .43,  - .47,  - .36) and Agreeableness (Beta = .27, .29, .25) predicted overall well-being, symptom occurrence and subjective relevance of distress, respectively. BMI predicted occurrence of symptoms (Beta = .23).

CONCLUSIONS

The findings have implications for the development of personality-informed interventions for bariatric patients in enhancing well-being and weight-loss maintenance following surgery.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Level III: Evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case-control analytic studies.