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Is There an Association Between the Body Mass Index and Interpersonal Violent Behavior?
Author(s) -
Ekmekcioglu Cem,
Devletlian Selin,
Blasche Gerhard,
Kundi Michael
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/1556-4029.12790
Subject(s) - body mass index , multinomial logistic regression , demography , obesity , logistic regression , odds ratio , poison control , psychology , association (psychology) , injury prevention , odds , suicide prevention , medicine , clinical psychology , medical emergency , statistics , mathematics , sociology , psychotherapist
An inverse relationship between the body mass index ( BMI ) and the risk of completed suicide was shown in several studies. Furthermore, it is suggested that obesity might be associated with a lower risk for violent criminality. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze whether a higher BMI is associated with a lower risk for being arrested due to violent behavior in a sample of 43,992 male offenders. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied to assess the relationship between different BMI categories and categories of committed crime as outcome variable by including various covariates. Our results indicated that compared to a normal BMI a higher BMI was associated with a significantly lower risk for being arrested in different crime categories associated with interpersonal violence, such as crimes against life and limb (for example: odds ratio = 0.60, CI 95%: 0.52–0.69 for 30–34.9 kg/m 2 ).