title: Effects of emotional symptoms and life stress on eating behaviors among adolescents.
abstract: The aim of this study was to explore possible effects of emotional symptoms (depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms) and life stress on eating behaviors (restrained, emotional and external eating behaviors) among junior and high school students in China. A total of 5473 students in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province were sampled to participate in this survey based on a clustering sampling approach. The survey collected sociodemographic data, emotional symptoms, life stress and eating behaviors of adolescents. Spearman correlation coefficients were measured and tested to examine the relationship between eating behaviors and emotional symptoms as well as life stress. In addition, we analyzed the data using Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression models. The results showed positive correlation between emotional symptoms, life stress, and eating behaviors. Furthermore, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and life stress were significantly associated with unhealthy eating behaviors, after adjusting for gender, age, BMI, parental education level and self-assessed family economic status. This study suggests that a comprehensive intervention focusing on emotion and stress management would be helpful for the prevention of unhealthy eating behaviors among Chinese adolescents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, 81 Mei Shan Road, Hefei 230032, Anhui, China.
authors.forename: Fangli
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Shaojun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Yuqiu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Qingyun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Shichen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zu
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Puyu
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Fangbiao
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tao
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D017677:Age Distribution; D001007:Anxiety / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002648:Child; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D050177:Overweight / Q000453:epidemiology; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data