Cathrine Lawaetz Wimmelmann

Introduction: Obesity and poor mental well‐being in childhood and adolescence are growing public health concerns with potential implications for a broad range of life outcomes. Understanding the longitudinal and potentially bidirectional relationship between weight status and mental well‐being is crucial for developing effective interventions to support children and adolescents. Methods: This systematic review synthesizes evidence on the bidirectional relationship between weight status and indicators of mental well‐being over time. Peer‐reviewed studies published up to January 10, 2025 were identified through searches in PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Eligible studies included longitudinal designs assessing weight status and mental well‐being in populations up to age 18 years. The Joanna Briggs Instrument assessed the risk of bias, and the findings were narratively summarized. Results: The review included 33 longitudinal studies conducted between 1994 and 2022. We found that higher childhood weight was associated with subsequent low mental well‐being, and an indication that poor mental well‐being was associated with subsequent higher weight. However, there was a scarcity of longitudinal studies exploring the influence of mental well‐being on subsequent weight status. Large heterogeneity in design and methods was found across the included studies. Conclusion: Findings indicated a bidirectional association between weight status and mental well‐being, with stronger evidence supporting the impact of weight status on mental well‐being than vice versa. Future research should prioritize longitudinal designs to better understand the influence of mental well‐being on later weight development and explore underlying mechanisms.

There is a growing focus on person-centered care, emphasizing the importance of respecting inter-individual differences and implementing individualized treatment initiatives. Prior research has established an association between personality traits, body mass index, and health-related behaviors. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of personality trait assessments in identifying individuals at risk of glycemic dysregulation and increasing BMI. This cross-sectional study used a dataset comprising 140 participants with diabetes who completed the Big Five personality trait questionnaire from the Lolland-Falster Health Study. Logistic regression was used to investigate associations between personality traits, glycemic control, and BMI ≥ 25. No significant associations between personality traits and glycemic control were found. There was a significant association between agreeableness and lower odds of BMI ≥ 25 in the unadjusted analysis (OR 0.54 (0.34–0.86)), which persisted after adjusting for sex, age, and education (OR 0.54 (0.33–0.89)). No significant association between glycemic control and personality traits was observed in this small sample study. However, higher levels of agreeableness were associated with a lower likelihood of having a BMI of ≥25. This preliminary study suggests that integrating personality assessments could help identify individuals at risk of increasing BMI. These findings highlight the potential of using personality traits to guide targeted interventions, offering a direction for future research.

Background: Childhood adversity has previously been associated with overweight and obesity in adult life, but there is a need for larger population-based studies using prospectively obtained adversity trajectories across childhood to confirm these associations. Moreover, childhood adversity may also be associated with underweight, which is less often studied. The aim of the current study is to investigate the association between childhood adversity trajectories from 0–15 years with weight categories in young adult men. Methods: The Danish Life Course Cohort (DANLIFE) was linked with the Danish Conscription Registry resulting in a study sample of 359,783 men, who have been assigned to one of five previously identified adversity trajectories from 0–15 years: “low adversity”, “early material deprivation”, “persistent material deprivation”, “loss or threat of loss”, and “high adversity”. Height and weight in young adulthood was assessed at a draft board examination at age 18–26 years. Associations of adversity trajectories and weight categories were investigated in multinomial regression models. Results: Compared with the “low adversity” group, the four other adversity groups had higher risks of underweight, overweight, and obesity. The “high adversity” group showed the strongest associations with both underweight (1.44 (1.32, 1.58)) and obesity (1.50 (1.39, 1.61)) when adjusted for parental origin, birth year, age at draft board examination, and maternal age. Conclusion: Childhood adversity, experienced between 0 and 15 years of life, was associated with a higher risk of underweight, overweight, and obesity in young adulthood among men.

Background The purpose of this study was to investigate if infants’ age at attaining motor developmental milestones is associated with the big five personality traits 50 years later. Methods Mothers of 8395 infants from the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort recorded a total of 12 motor developmental milestones during the first year of their infant’s life. Information on at least one milestone was available for 1307 singletons with adult follow-up scores on the NEO-Five-Factor Inventory. The mean age at personality testing was 50.1 years. Results Slower attainment of motor milestones was associated with increased neuroticism and lower conscientiousness in midlife. All 12 motor developmental milestones explained a total of 2.4% of the variance in neuroticism, while they explained 3.2% of the variance in conscientiousness. These results remained significant after adjustment for the included family and perinatal covariates, as well as adult intelligence. Discussion The personality trait of neuroticism is a general risk factor for psychopathology and has in young adulthood been found to be associated with early motor development. However, evidence on associations of motor developmental milestones with other personality traits has been non-existent. These findings suggest that delays in early motor development may not only characterise individuals with later psychopathology, including schizophrenia, but may also be associated with personality traits such as neuroticism and conscientiousness through the life course.

Many studies analyzing health effects of alcohol consumption have operationalized alcohol intake from a single baseline measure without further follow-up. Consequently, there is a lack of knowledge about stability and change in alcohol consumption over the life course and the social, psychological, lifestyle, and health characteristics associated with different alcohol consumption trajectories. The aims of the study were to describe the prevalence of different adult-life alcohol consumption trajectories among Danish men and to analyze social, psychological, lifestyle and health characteristics associated with these trajectories. For 2510 Danish men, retrospective decade-based information on alcohol consumption during life period 26–60 years was obtained in late midlife and information on individual characteristics was obtained in young adulthood, late midlife and from national hospital registries. The men were allocated to one of six a priori defined alcohol consumption trajectories. About 65% of Danish men had a stable moderate consumption, drinking 1–21 units weekly while the five other consumption trajectories were comparatively rare: 3% stable abstainers, 4.7% stable high-risk drinkers, 10.9% with increasing and 12.7% with decreasing consumption. Moderate consumption over the adult life-course was associated with the most favorable social, psychological, lifestyle and health characteristics while the other trajectories were generally associated with less favorable characteristics to varying degrees–e. g. this was the case for the stable abstaining trajectory and in particular the trajectory with decreasing consumption. The findings suggest that the majority of Danish men drink moderately in the life period from young adulthood to late midlife, and deviance from this ‘normal’ moderate consumption trajectory is associated with less favorable social, psychological, lifestyle and health characteristics. Some of these characteristics may influence alcohol consumption patterns, but for some of the trajectories, alcohol consumption may influence health as well as social and psychological functioning.

Background: Alcohol consumption potentially influences psychological well-being in beneficial and harmful ways, but prospective studies on the association show mixed results. Our main purpose was to examine prospective associations between alcohol consumption and psychological well-being in middle-aged men and women. Methods: The study sample included 4148 middle-aged individuals (80% men) from the Copenhagen Aging and Midlife Biobank who reported their alcohol consumption (average weekly consumption and frequency of binge drinking) at baseline in 2004 or 2006 and reported their psychological well-being (satisfaction with life and vitality) at follow-up in 2009–2011. Analyses were adjusted for sociodemographic factors, lifestyle, social relations, and morbidity. Results: For satisfaction with life at follow-up, lower scores were observed in men and women who were alcohol abstinent at baseline as well as in men with heavy alcohol consumption compared with moderate alcohol consumption at baseline. Moreover, men with weekly binge drinking at baseline had lower satisfaction with life scores at follow-up than men with moderate frequency of binge drinking (1–3 times/month). In relation to vitality at follow-up, alcohol abstinence at baseline in men and women and heavy alcohol consumption at baseline in men were associated with lower scores compared with moderate alcohol consumption (yet in men these findings were not robust to adjustment for covariates). Conclusions: Alcohol abstinence seems to be prospectively associated with adverse psychological well-being (vitality and life satisfaction) in men and women, while heavy alcohol consumption seems to be prospectively associated with adverse satisfaction with life in men. Finally, a prospective association between weekly binge drinking and lower life satisfaction was observed in men.

Objectives. The main objective of the current study was to investigate associations between two aspects of well-being - satisfaction with life and vitality - and incidence of and mortality from ischemic heart disease. Study design. The Copenhagen Aging and Midlife Biobank (CAMB) was conducted from 2009 to 2011 and was used as baseline data with 6750 individuals having complete information on The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and 6652 individuals with complete information on the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) vitality scale. Incidence of and mortality from ischemic heart disease were assessed using Danish register data and a total of 349 CAMB individuals were registered with either a diagnosis (n = 337) or had died (n = 12) from ischemic heart disease before the end of follow-up (31 December 2017). The hazard ratios of ischemic heart disease according to satisfaction with life and vitality scores were investigated using Cox proportional hazard regression adjusted for potential covariates. Results. A one standard deviation increase on the SWLS was associated with an 18% reduced risk of ischemic heart disease while a one standard deviation increase on the SF-36 vitality scale was associated with a 24% reduced risk of ischemic heart disease after adjustment for baseline socio-demographic factors. These associations remained when separately adjusting for lifestyle, objective health, and social factors, but became non-significant when adjusting for self-reported health. Conclusion. Our study indicates that both psychological and health-related components of wellbeing are important in relation to ischemic heart disease.