HITS collaborate on healthy weight and mental health workshop 

Colleagues from three Health Integration Teams (HITs) – Healthy Weight, Psychosis, and Adversity and Trauma – took part in an online workshop on 26 January to explore the links between healthy weight and mental health.

More than 40 people joined the workshop, which looked at evidence for the relationship between trauma, poverty, mental health and weight, with the aim of identifying ways to strengthen prevention and service provision in the region.

The event was organised by Justine Womack, Healthy Weight HIT co-director, who is Health and Wellbeing Programme Lead at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities Southwest, in the Department for Health and Social Care.

Adversity and Trauma HIT member Laura Howe is a Professor of Epidemiology and Statistics at the University of Bristol. She gave the first talk on the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences, poverty, obesity and mental health, based on insights from her research using Children of the 90s data. She highlighted that intergenerational trauma and poverty were big risk factors:  women were three times more likely to have both depression and overweight if living in poverty, and men twice as likely.

Other presentations explored:

• how adults living with overweight or obesity and depression, or similar mental health conditions, access, engage with and experience weight management services,
• using a trauma-informed approach in weight management and mental health services – where the boundaries lie and how could we be working better,
• and protecting the preventative health of people experiencing psychosis, from a carer’s perspective.

Justine Womack said:

“Studies have shown that between 20 and 60 percent of people living with obesity also have a mental health condition. We are exploring ways to better identify and support those with mental health needs and put this at the centre of the way services are delivered.”