The importance of overcoming stigma
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Important points needing urgent attention.
People who are overweight or living with obesity are often targets of bias and hurtful stigmatisation. This badly affects their daily lives, threatening their health, generating health inequalities, and interfering with effective obesity intervention.
Stigma can lead to avoidance of treatment, increase of eating disorders and decrease of physical activity, depression and even risk of suicide.
There are five important points that need urgent attention:
1. Respect towards patients living with obesity
Patients living with obesity often complain that they are not treated respectfully. People living with obesity should be protected from abuse on all levels. This is true for adults, but also for children and adolescents.
There is an urgent need for greater respect from politicians, healthcare workers, scientists, media, schools and from everyone generally who are inclined to stigmatise people living with obesity.
2. Acceptance that obesity is...
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