Association between body dissatisfaction, physical activity and mental health indicators in Brazilian adolescents

This study aimed to verify the association between body dissatisfaction, physical activity and mental health indicators in Brazilian adolescents. This is a cross-sectional study, where the information that characterized and composed the variables was obtained from the education database of the National School Health Survey- Brazil- 2019. The sample consisted of 124,898 adolescents aged between 13 and 17 from public and private schools in all regions of Brazil. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression, with a significance level of 0.05. All the analyses were carried out using the Jamovi (R) for Windows software, version 2.3. An association was found between body dissatisfaction and insufficient physical activity (OR = 1.17; 95%CI = 1.44; 1.21) and in all the indicators of the variables related to mental health that adolescents answered "most of the time, always": miscellaneous worries (OR = 1.43; 95%CI = 1.39; 1.48), feelings of sadness (OR = 1.97; 95%CI = 1.89; 2.04), perceived indifference (OR = 1.42; 95%CI = 1.37; 1.47), feelings of irritation (OR = 1.39; 95%CI = 1.35; 1.44), suicidal ideation (OR = 1.49; 95%CI = 1.43; 1.56), and adolescents who reported having "no close friends" (OR = 1.38; 95%CI = 1.27; 1.50). We conclude that there is a direct association between body dissatisfaction, insufficient physical activity and fragile mental health indicators in Brazilian adolescents.