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Mindfulness-ul și vitalitatea subiectivă ca mediatori ai relației între depresie, anxietate, stres și mâncatul pe fond emoțional

Raluca Sfetcu, Dragoș Iliescu

Management in Health September 30, 2021 DOI: 10.5233/44tw3219 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Cross-sectional study Peer reviewed
Sample size 2,632
Population Opportunistic sample of adults recruited via Google Forms
Topics Meditation
Key findings Emotional eating was reported by 43.1% of participants and correlated positively with depression, anxiety, and stress and negatively with subjective vitality, mindfulness, and emotion regulation. Subjective vitality mediated the impact of depression and anxiety on emotional eating, while mindfulness mediated only the depression pathway, suggesting these factors as intervention targets.

Abstract

Current scientific evidence shows that emotional eating is a risk factor for obesity as well as for the development of eating disorders. It is also well established that depression, anxiety and stress are predictors for emotional eating. Research is now moving towards understanding the mediating factors of this relationship in order to develop effective intervention programs for the management of emotional eating. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between depression, anxiety and stress and emotional eating and to test the potential for mediating subjective vitality, mindfulness and emotion regulation strategies. This is a cross-sectional study, conducted on an opportunistic sample of 2632 people; data collection was via a "Google forms". The questionnaire included a section on demographics (sex, age, education, occupation, marital status, monthly income), and measurement scales for both the dependent variable (emotional eating) and the independent variables (stress, depression, anxiety, subjective vitality, mindfulness, emotion regulation). The results indicate that emotional eating is a very common behavior in the study population, with 43.1% of participants having this tendency. Depression, anxiety, and stress correlate positively with emotion eating, while subjective vitality, mindfulness, and emotion regulation correlate negatively. Subjective vitality mediates both the impact of depression and anxiety on eating emotionally and mindfulness only that of depression. At the clinical level, this study indicates the need to develop programs focused on detecting a potential underlying depression when emotional eating is present as well as the development of programs based on increasing subjective vitality and training mindfulness to reduce emotional eating.

Comparable studies

Other cross-sectional and survey studies on meditation, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
Construct Validity of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in Meditating and Nonmeditating Samples Experienced meditators and nonmeditating comparison groups 2008 Cross-sectional study
Neural Correlates of Dispositional Mindfulness During Affect Labeling Adult participants 2007 Observational cross-sectional n = 27
Assessing mindfulness in children and adolescents: Development and validation of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM). School-aged children and adolescents 2011 Cross-sectional validation study n = 1,413
Mindfulness and self-compassion as predictors of psychological wellbeing in long-term meditators and matched nonmeditators Experienced meditators and demographically matched nonmeditators 2012 Cross-sectional study n = 152
Mechanisms of Action in the Inverse Relationship Between Mindfulness and Psychological Distress Undergraduates 2008 Cross-sectional, correlational

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