Changes in Psychiatric Symptoms, Eating Disorder Behaviors, and Health Behaviors Following Six Months of GLP-1 Treatment for Obesity

In a sample of veterans with obesity and established metabolic disease receiving supervised GLP-1 treatment for weight loss, we observed a consistent pattern of improved psychiatric health, eating disorder behaviors, and health-related quality of life. In addition to observing statistically significant changes across all the latter dimensions using validated psychometric measures, effect size magnitudes were also large enough to suggest potentially clinically meaningful improvements. Importantly, we observed robust evidence of decreases in depressive symptoms - averaging 30% declines in symptom severity - with no signs of increased suicidal ideation symptoms in the sample. The smaller size of this sample necessarily warrants additional research to validate these findings across the broader veteran population and among non-veteran samples.