Objective:

The aim of this research was to determine belief and attitudes towards obesity of people with a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome and to assess the relation between subscales of Health Belief Model Scale in Obesity (HBMSO) and age, gender, education level and working status.

Methods:

This research was conducted on people who were older than 19 years, at least primary school graduates, didn’t take any steroid and hormone drugs and had healthy thyroid functioning. 113 people with metabolic syndrome according to criteria of International Diabetes Federation (2005) were selected. After participants completed a short survey relating to their demographic characteristics, HBMSO was completed.

Results:

According to body mass index (BMI), it was found that 2.6% (n=3) of subjects were overweight, 71.7% (n=81) were obese, 25.7% (n=29) were morbidly obese. It was observed that 99.1% of people didn’t know the term ‘Metabolic Syndrome’. There was no difference in the scores of the importance of health, perception of severity, perception of obstacle and perception of benefit with respect to group of ages. However, the difference in the score of perception of susceptibility according to age groups was determined to be significant (p=0.023). In addition, there was a clear tendency to significance in perception of obstacle within age groups (p=0.051). The score of the importance of health, perception of severity, perception of susceptibility, perception of obstacle, perception of benefit subscales did not differ within gender, education level and working status (p>0.050). In the light of correlation coefficients, there was no strong correlation between body mass indexes of patients and subscales (p>0.05).

Conclusion:

Despite the fact that subscales of HBMSO did not exhibit difference within gender, education level and working status groups, only perception of susceptibility exhibited a statistically significant difference within age groups. There was a clear tendency to significance in perception of obstacle within age groups.

Keywords: Metabolic syndrome, obesity, health belief, behavior