Alcohol, overeating, depression linked

SEATTLE, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- TV shows like "Sex and the City" may have glamorized drinking, but excessive alcohol is tied to overeating and depression in young women, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Carolyn McCarty, a research associate professor at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute, and colleagues surveyed 393 men and 383 women at ages 24, 27 and 30 about their weight, alcohol use and depression symptoms within the last year.

"When you look across time, alcohol use and obesity predicted later depression," McCarty said in a statement.

"The big picture here is that these disorders, though they're different in manifestation and symptoms, appear to be related for some groups of women."

The study, published in the September/October issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry, finds women who had alcohol use disorders at age 24 were more than three times as likely to be obese at age 27, compared with women who did not.

Women who were obese at age 27 were more than twice as likely to be depressed at age 30, and women who were depressed at age 27 had an increased risk of alcohol disorders at age 30. The same links did not appear in men over time.