Depression is a condition or mood when one feels low, avoids company and sharing his or her concerns with family members or friends. Under depression one loses interest in normal human activities and evinces low or diminished interest in happenings around him or her.

Irritability, restlessness, lack of interest in everything, loss of appetite and tendency to remain aloof with suicidal tendencies are among marked features of those who suffer from depression.

Though depression in older people is easy to diagnose, it is at times confused with ever changing moods of children who also tend to show not all symptoms, which elders may do. But incidence of depression both among children and adults has been rising. So is the number of people suffering from obesity? Research is yet to pinpoint causes for factors that are making more and more people depressed and obese. They are also trying to find a common link between these two serious disorders.

Has obesity anything to do with depression? Research has shown that those with active lifestyle and who undertake 30-minute brisk walk at least three times a week are far less prone to depression than those with static lifestyle.

Though it is yet to be scientifically established that obesity is directly or indirectly linked to depression, yet obesity as a consequence to depression is the topic for research worldwide.

A latest study has, however, established that adolescents suffering from depression are more likely to gain weight or become obese and stay obese because of there altered lifestyle.

Adult obesity and depression have been linked to each other, more so in case of women. Earlier research had also established a link between depression in young people and they’re higher than normal body weight.  Scientists, however, have not been able to pin point whether obesity caused depression or depression led to obesity in adults in general and women in particular.  Doctors working at a Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati conducted a study to find out whether depression could foretell development of obesity and its subsequent retention by the depressed patient.

The results of various latest studies reveal that depression in childhood and its persistence in adolescence could be a cause of adolescence or adult obesity. They further held that depression and obesity have been rising rapidly worldwide. There are, however, no known reasons for growing depression and obesity. In obese persons, depression is certainly a major risk factor. Though obesity is considered a biological heterogeneous disorder, depression is state of an unstable mind.