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According to WHO, obesity and depression are among the greatest Public Health problems worldwide. Some studies show important association between these diseases that can worsen the prognostic for co-morbidities, reduce compliance with treatment, increase morbidity and mortality, and deteriorate the functional and psychosocial roles of obese people. This paper comes out from a Master thesis research in Family Health, aiming to investigate the perception of depressed obese people about the factors linked with the maintenance of their obesity. This is a qualitative exploratory study in a Family Health Service in Rio de Janeiro city. Sixty-eight obese people were randomly selected, and, among them, 21 showed depression scores, measured by the Beck Depression Inventory. Out of these, 19 were interviewed and the resulting data were analyzed through the content analysis technique. Some of the main categories found were physical suffering, sedentary behavior, emotional suffering, self-image dissatisfaction, inadequate eating behavior, family and social relationships, and the motivation for change. They were grouped in five thematic axes: the perception of one's obesity, the feed behavior, the family environment, the social retraction, and the lack of motivation. Taken together, the perceptions of these people were mapped in a complex net of mutually reinforcing factors associated with the maintenance of the obesity, and this is aggravated by depression. These results could help to conceive new strategies for an integral and specific care of obese people, mostly those who are depressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are developing a reflection that takes the fear as a central connection between the world of news and readers, listeners and viewers. The starting point is the acceptance that such a feeling is a kind of social representation that establishes a kind of consensus among the population, in this special case of Rio de Janeiro, producing meanings of urban space. For both, especially to cause a rapprochement between the fields of communication and psychology, regain some contributions of two famous authors, Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky, particularly with regard to the dimension of culture as a structuring element of social interaction. Secondly, we will consider the question of the centrality of culture, highlighting the ideological struggle around which produces the hegemonic construction of meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]