Psychosocial Stressors and Obesity

Obesity has been a public health issue for decades. Nevertheless, it is of recent past that researchers have implicated psychological and social (psychosocial) stress as an important risk factor of obesity. In this chapter, we introduce the topic of stress and draw attention to the biobehavioral pathways that undergird the association between psychosocial stress and obesity risk. We highlight six important psychosocial stressors that have been identified in the literature as obesogenic risk and discuss areas for future research that would help advance our understanding of psychosocial stress and obesity.