The Role of Psychology in Obesity Care
Obesity is rarely explained by one factor alone. Biology influences how our bodies regulate weight and appetite, while psychological factors such as stress or trauma may lead people to use food for comfort or coping. Food is also closely tied to pleasure — from childhood many of us learn to associate eating with comfort, celebration, or being rewarded — shaping behaviours that last into adulthood. Added to this, most of us live in environments where food is abundant, heavily promoted, and central to social life. Together, these biological, psychological, and social influences make obesity a complex disease, where both losing weight and maintaining behaviour change can be especially challenging.
How Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals Help
Psychologists bring expertise in understanding how thoughts, emotions, behaviours and life experiences affect health and wellbeing. Within specialist weight management services (Tier 3 and Tier 4), they contribute across a range of areas – including direct clinical work, multidisciplinary team input, research, and service audit. Some examples of their role include:
- Assessment and formulation: developing an understanding of each person’s individual circumstances, including eating behaviours, psychological wellbeing, mental health, support needs, and readiness for treatments such as GLP-1 medication or metabolic bariatric surgery.
- Delivering interventions: providing evidence-based psychological therapies, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, to support behaviour change, emotional wellbeing, and long-term adjustment.
- Support before and after treatment: preparing people for the behaviour changes and life adjustments obesity treatments involve and helping them adapt afterwards.
- Addressing barriers: working with people on areas such as emotional or disordered eating, trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, or weight stigma that can interfere with behaviour change or weight management.
- Maintaining behaviour change: supporting people to develop coping strategies, manage setbacks, and maintain healthier behaviours in the long-term.
- Contributing to MDT care: working with colleagues across disciplines to integrate psychological understanding into treatment planning and service delivery, helping ensure that care is safe, effective, and sustainable.
Why This Matters
Routinely integrating psychology within obesity services makes medical, behavioural, and surgical treatments more useful and meaningful to people living with obesity. It helps people prepare for treatment, make informed choices, and adapt successfully afterwards. Psychological support also improves safety by identifying potential risks and ensuring people have the right coping strategies in place. Most importantly, it increases the chances that improvements in health and wellbeing will be sustained over the long-term.
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Get Involved: Psychological Professionals in BOMSS
Psychologists and other mental health professionals are an integral part of the BOMSS community. As the role of psychological provision continues to grow across both medical and surgical obesity pathways, BOMSS is working to support better visibility, representation, and collaboration for those working in this space.
If you're a psychologist, therapist, or mental health practitioner working in obesity or weight management, you are warmly encouraged to join BOMSS. Membership helps strengthen our voice as a professional group within the society and supports continued inclusion of psychological perspectives in national discussions and events.
Click HERE to become a BOMSS member.
Stay Connected: BOMSS Psychological Professionals' Newsletter
To support connection and knowledge-sharing across the growing community of psychologists in obesity treatment and care, BOMSS now publishes a Psychological Professionals’ Newsletter three times per year.
Each edition may include:
- Updates from clinical practice and research
- Reflections from national events (e.g. BOMSS Annual Meeting)
- News about training, resources, and working group activity
- A Spotlight On... Q&A featuring psychological professionals in the field
You can explore previous Spotlight On... HERE
From September 2025, psychological professional BOMSS members will receive the newsletter. If you are a BOMSS member but not registered as a psychologist (for example, a mental health nurse) and have not been receiving the newsletter, please email info@bomss.org to be added to the circulation list.
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Psychology in Tier 4 Services: Johnson & Johnson Advisory Board Summary
In May 2025, a two-day Advisory Board meeting was hosted by Johnson & Johnson MedTech, bringing together psychologists and mental health professionals from across Tier 4 services in England. The focus was to discuss challenges, good practice, and future priorities for psychological provision in metabolic bariatric surgery pathways.
Key themes from the 2-day advisory board included:
- The need for national guidance and consistency across services
- Improving access and equity to psychological care
- Standardising assessments and pathways
- Enhancing post-operative support
- Developing job descriptions, training materials, and a shared resource hub
The summary of this meeting is available here which has been developed by J&J:
[Link or PDF: J&J Advisory Board Summary – Bariatric Psychology in Tier 4]
We are keen to ensure this work reaches a wider audience within BOMSS, as many of the insights and priorities raised are relevant across all aspects of obesity care.