Psychological status among female candidates for surgical treatment of obesity.

The identification of patients who suffer psychosocial complications after surgical treatment for obesity remains an unresolved problem. Some researchers have tried to identify the psychological status of patients prior to surgery, but have been hampered by lack of an adequate methodology to handle surgical candidates as a psychologically heterogeneous group. The present studies of this problem utilized the multivariate method of profile analysis. This method, when successfully applied, has the advantage of recognizing different subgroups. If reliable psychological subgroups of the population of candidates for surgical treatment can be determined, the prediction of psychological casualties may be significantly advanced. Minnesota Multidimensional Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles of 199 hyperobese women were analyzed using a principal components procedure for profile analysis. Three subgroups were derived, each with unique psychological characteristics. The first group was essentially without deviation from the norm; the second was characterized by neurotic features; and the third group was identifiable by anger and hostile acting-out. The comparability of these profiles with the clinical literature was encouraging. Therefore, the authors conducted a second study with the purpose of determining whether the obtained profiles were usable by clinicians without cumbersome statistical formulas. Two groups of clinical psychologists were asked to sort 17 randomly selected profiles into the three subgroups. They successfully classified 75 percent of the profiles. The results of both studies are considered sufficiently encouraging to warrant further work.