I agree that obesity attracts a social and medical stigma but is it that sometimes a medical challenge is mistaken as a stigma too? I mean that in the world of healthcare, it is not so much stigmatised but it is seen as a medical issue for which an individual is the key to their own treatment? For something that is more often than not, whether there are psychological contributions or not, caused by the consumption of too many calories and too little movement. The risks associated to this are massive, including higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, as well as many others. Yes it is probably frustrating to a clinician whose patient is not losing weight despite all they try, but the biggest problem here is the motivation and individual approach of both parties. With a rapidly growing percent of the population now being diagnosed as 'obese', joint efforts need to be made on how to help those who want to lose weight. In schools there are mass NHS initiatives being introduced to try to reduce childhood obesity, some more effective than others.
In society, people are judgemental and cruel to those classed as 'fat' in their eyes, and sadly this has a massive negative impact on those who want or need to lose weight. But in the world of medicine are clinicians right to be frustrated by the increase in rates of obesity? Is the lack of time and money available to use on preventative medicine and education a massive challenge to these increased rates? It seems that more and more, the responsibility is passed on to the patient to try to deal with the problem because of these restrictions and medical staff don’t see the efforts or improvements, they only see the increasing consequences of obesity.
