Are you depressed because you're fat? Or fat because you're depressed? Julio Licinio, MD, PhD (left), says depression and obesity are related. Licinio, a psychiatrist who is dean of Upstate's College of Medicine, has researched how the use of antidepressants can be a risk factor for obesity, even long after the medications have been discontinued. He got involved in this research after noting that a sharp rise in obesity rates in Western societies correlated with a large increase in the amount of prescriptions written for antidepressants.