Psychological problems may prevent weight-loss drugs from being effective, researchers have warned.
Dr Amelia Hollywood of Surrey University, UK, explains: "Weight-loss medication is widely prescribed, but with very mixed results. Many patients either do not lose weight or go on to regain any weight lost.
"We felt it was important to look at the experiences of these people who do not lose weight, or do not maintain the weight lost in the long term, with this drug."
Her team interviewed ten women who were prescribed the weight-loss medication Orlistat but had put on weight over the 18 months since they started taking it. She found that these women saw their failure to lose weight as "an inevitable part of their identity", and they had a "self-fulfilling belief that they would be perpetual dieters".
In their interviews, the women blamed the mechanics of the drug, highlighted the barriers to weight loss, and talked about other weight-loss methods that had previously not worked.
Their beliefs about themselves and about the difficulty of losing weight lay behind the failure of the anti-obesity drugs, says Dr Hollywood. She was due to report her findings today to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology in Liverpool, UK.
She stated: "Our research suggests that prescribing this type of drug should be accompanied by information that reinforces the reality of sticking to the low fat diet that is necessary to avoid the unpleasant consequences of the drug, such as anal leakage, and that these ‘side effects’ should not be attributed to the drug but to the individual’s eating behaviour.
"Unless we get the psychology right, this medication is often going to produce disappointing results."
Research presented on September 5 2012 at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology held in Liverpool, UK.
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