Psychological Assessment is the Key to Improving Gastric Bypass Surgery Success Rates

For an increasing number of severely obese individuals bariatric surgery is the solution to ridding themselves of excess weight when diet and exercise have not succeeded, although it is definitely not an easy course and produces a wide range of outcomes in different patients. There are several different surgical options used today from gastric bypass surgery which involves the reduction of the size of the stomach and the bypassing of a section of the intestine to both restrict the amount of food that can be eaten and the absorption of calories from that food to lap banding which merely reduces the size of the stomach to once again restrict the amount of food which can be consumed. Whichever type of surgery is carried out the underlying principle is to make the body burn off a greater number of calories than can be ingested and so reduce weight by using up the body's fat reserves. The real problem with weight loss surgery however does not lie in the actual surgery itself but is seen in the weeks and months following surgery when patients discover that their lifestyle has to alter considerably and that they must adjust to a totally new eating regime. For many patients this is hard but for some it can lead to serious problems which are simply too much for them to cope with. There are a lot of causes of obesity but two common problems serve to illustrate this point. The first is the problem of those individuals whose obesity has resulted from, or been aggravated by, emotional eating. Here individuals turn to eating when they are stressed or when their emotions are low. Emotional or comfort eating becomes a very strong habit which is difficult to break and the psychological pressures which usually follow weight loss surgery are exactly the sort of pressures which will spark the desire for emotional eating in people who suffer from this problem. The second is the problem of those individuals who are prone to binge-eating and the uncontrollable guilt, disgust and depression which normally follow episodes of binge-eating. It is only too easy to see the extreme difficulty that such individuals will find themselves with in trying to deal with the significant changes in lifestyle following weight loss surgery. Taking all of these and other factors into account it is perhaps not too surprising to discover that in the region of twenty percent of those being considered for weight loss surgery are not suitable, or perhaps more accurately not ready, for surgery and this is where psychological obesity treatments come into their own. Considerable attention is given to the need for patients to meet the physical requirements for surgery (in terms of things like their BMI and the existence of other medical problems associated with their being considerably overweight) but all too often little attention is given to very real psychological problems which are associated with surgery. For surgery to have the very best possible chance for success then it is extremely important to pay close attention to the psychological requirements of patients and then provide them with the necessary pre-operative assessment, counseling and, most significantly, treatment.

Pot Belly is not Just About your Tummy

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