Obesidade, magreza, alimentação e cirurgia bariátrica: representações sociais de pessoas com obesidade

Abstract

Whereas the obesity is a problem that has ceased to be individual and for some time is characterized by its social nature and, being the obese a hostage of it and the community social psychology the main branch of psychology focused on the processes of transformation and strengthening, this research sought to identify, in obese adults, the Social Representations of obesity, diet, leanness and bariatric surgery. This is a cross-sectional research of descriptive and exploratory nature, not experimental, based on a qualitative approach. The participants were divided into two groups: surgical and non-surgical, formed by the same number of subjects. The data collection took place between June and August of 2016, through an in-depth interview with a questionnaire composed of open and closed questions. Data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical package, questionnaire responses were coded and analyzed descriptively (absolute, average frequency and standard deviation). For the analysis of data from the interview, the software IRaMuTeQ was used, developed by Pierre Ratinaud (Ratinaud, 2009; Lahlou, 2012) and licensed by GNU GPL (v2), contributing to the textual analysis or the content of the responses of the two groups. Sixteen adults, twelve women and four men, aged between 20 and 58 years (M= 39,3; DP=10) participated in this study. All were considered obese according to the classification of Body Mass Index (BMI), with body weight between 82 kg and 143 kg (M=105,75; DP=14,7). The result of the estimations of body mass from silhouettes indicated that the 16 patients surveyed were dissatisfied with their body image due to overweight. The corpora for analysis of social representations about obesity, eating, leanness and bariatric surgery were generated from open answers to questions about the representation of each described condition. The social representation of obesity is based around three main axes: the deleterious aspects of obesity on health; feelings and perceptions related to social demerit and to the feelings of those surveyed. The social representation of food is anchored on the preoccupation with health, in the alimentary behavior and in how and how much this behavior can influence in their alimentary practices. The social representations of the leanness appear coincidently like a state of beauty, of happiness and self-confidence, perceptually desired among the group. The analysis of the social representations of bariatric surgery allowed us to perceive differences between the favorable and unfavorable groups for surgery, although both groups understood the intervention as one of the treatment options for obesity.