Background: Obesity and depression are increasingly prevalent and associated with numerous health complications including physical and mental, to examine the nature of the association between depression and obesity we have conducted a cross sectional study. Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between depression and obesity through implicit and explicit measures and to analyze their relationship in obese and non-obese. Materials and Methods : In this cross sectional study 124 participants both obese and non-obese were obtained from Arogyadhama a holistic health centre, S-VAYSA University, Bangalore, were assessed using a Implicit association test(IAT) to measure the implicit depression, BDI-II questionnaire for explicit depression were used with help of inquisit.3 software. Results: Obese are slightly depressed than non obese implicitly (P<0.05), and explicitly obese people showed more depressed than non-obese people (P<0.001). Congruence between implicit and explicit depression in obese and non-obese, there was a strong correlation between implicit and explicit depression in non-obese group (rs = -.61, p < .001), compared to obese group (rs = -.003, p < .97). Conclusion: This study provides evidence that obese are slightly depressed implicitly (unconscious) and more depressed explicitly (conscious) compared to non-obese, an important, new observation that implicit and explicit incongruence can be found in obese individuals than non-obese individuals.
