title: Emotional Openness, problematic eating behaviours, and overweight in adolescents.
abstract: Overweight, a common health condition in adolescence, has been linked with difficulties in emotional processing. This study investigates associations between emotional processing, conceptualised through the model of Emotional Openness (EO), problematic eating behaviours, including Eating in the Absence of Hunger and disinhibited eating, and overweight in adolescents. Several self-report instruments were completed by 160 youngsters (mean age: 14.36±0.61years) from the community, including 39 overweight and obese adolescents (24.5%). In girls, bootstrap analyses supported a mediating effect of restrained eating on the relation between three EO dimensions and body mass index percentile, in particular the communication of emotions, the cognitive-conceptual representation of emotions, and the perception of bodily indicator of emotions. No mediating effect was found in boys. These results have important implications for psychological weight management interventions, as they underline the relevance of work on emotional processing in order to reduce problematic eating behaviours.
authors: University of Fribourg, Department of Psychology, Rue P.-A. de Faucigny 2, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. Electronic address: mireille.walther@unifr.ch.
authors: Mireille
authors: M
authors: Walther
authors: University of Leipzig, Integrated Research and Treatment Center AdiposityDiseases, Philipp-Rosenthal-Strasse 27, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors: Anja
authors: A
authors: Hilbert
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D015992:Body Mass Index; D004435:Eating / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006815:Hunger; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009765:Obesity / Q000523:psychology; D050177:Overweight / Q000523:psychology*; D057566:Self Report
keywords: Adolescence; Emotional Openness; Emotional processing; Gender; Overweight; Problematic eating behaviours