Aptidão física, índice de massa corporal e sintomas de depressão em escolares

Abstract

Chronic non-communicable diseases are the main cause of death and impairment in the world and are strongly associated with individual´s life style. Objective: to identify and analyse health related physical fitness among school age children; to assess depressive symptoms; classify children´s Body Mass Index (BMI); to investigate correlation between depression symptoms, cardiorespiratory performance and BMI. Method: cross sectional study with a convenience sample, conducted at Neves Paulista (SP) municipal schools. Participants performed motor tests proposed by the Brasil Sport Project (PROESP-BR) to assess health related physical fitness: cardiorespiratory resistance, strength, and localized muscle endurance, flexibility and body composition. The Children´s Depression Inventory was used to assess depression symptoms. Results: participants were 163 school children, 91 male (56.83%) and 72 female (44.17%). Mean age was 8.59 ± 1.14 for males and e 8.52 ± 1.03 for females. The following results were obtained with the tests used to assess physical fitness: a) cardiorespiratory resistance – both sexes had insatisfatory performance and results on the cardiorespiratory resistance test, which indicates a health risk zone. b) strength, and localized muscle endurance – the performance was satisfactory for boys and girls with a significant difference indicating superiority for males. c) flexibility - girls had a significant higher performance compared to boys. Results indicated absence of depression symptoms for the majority of participants and, when those were present, females had more symptoms. According to BMI the percentual of participants with obesity was equal for males and females (18%) although males had a higher percentage of overweight (27%) when compared to females (19%).There was a positive correlation between BMI and depression symptoms for girls, and no correlation was found between cardiorespiratory performance and depression symptoms. Conclusions: assessment of physical fitness showed diferent results for the used tests. An unsatisfying performance on the cardiorespiratory test for both sexes showed that males and females are vulnerable for health problems; adequate results for boys and girls for strength and localized muscle endurance was found but boys had a higher performance; girls had higher scores on flexibility. A small number of participants presented depression symptoms and girls had more symptoms than boys. The majority of participants had normal levels of BMI, with a higher percentage of overweigh among males (body composition). Girls with higher BMI had a better performance on the cardiorespiratory test and there was a correlation between higher frequency of depression symptoms and BMI for females.