Night eating syndrome and emotional states in university students

Abstract

Introduction: University students are exposed to many factors related to Night Eating Syndrome (NES), an eating disorder that may be associated with obesity.Objective: To determine the prevalence of NES among students from a Brazilian university and evaluate the association of the syndrome behaviours with emotional, biological and environmental factors. Methods:Cross-sectional study with 200 students from a private higher education institution located in the city of Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, Brazil. NES was evaluated using the Night Eating Questionnaire (NEQ), considering the NEQ score ≥ 25 as the cutoff value for indication of the syndrome. Depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms were assessed using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) questionnaire. Additional information was collected about the participants (gender, age, weight and height), the academic status (enrolled course, study period and year) and the employment status (whether the participant worked at least 4h daily in addition to studying).Results: 30 participants (15%) presented NEQ score ≥ 25, indicative of NES. There was no association between the NEQ score and the variables: gender, nutritional status, work, enrolled course, study period and academic year. There was an association between NEQ score and severity of depression (p=0.0001), anxiety (p=0.0001) and stress (p=0.0218). Conclusion:Evidence of a high prevalence of NES was found among Brazilian university students and an association between the behaviours of the syndrome with depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms was found.

Estresse e sobrepeso/obesidade em estudantes de enfermagem

“…Unlike other studies showing a significant relationship among stress, overweight and obesity 5 , 22 , the findings of this study did not show statistically significant differences between weight changes of students, according to the BMI classification and the levels of stress evaluated by the ASNS session (p>0.05). Significant relationships were found with some demographic and health variables.…”

“…This behavior may become a habit and people can start using food to relieve stress 1 . Increased consumption of foods in situations of anxiety is frequently reported in the literature 5 , 22 .…”

“…This mutual influence can cause physical, psychic, emotional and behavioral changes 4 . A study that evaluated the night eating syndrome showed that students from a Brazilian university present a high prevalence of this behavior, which has been associated with depression symptoms, anxiety and stress 5 .…”

Brazilian Loneliness Scale: Evidence of Validity Based on Relations to Depression, Anxiety and Stress

“…Through the analysis of DASS-21, it was indicated that 43.8% of the Brazilian college students had moderate to extremely severe depression. This result was quite similar to other Brazilian study that used the same measure (Borges et al, 2017), which investigated depression levels in 200 college students from the state of Ceará and identified a proportion of 42.5% of the sample with moderate to extremely severe depression. It is important to highlight that both studies used samples from different Brazilian states, indicating that the university context might generate similar psychological demands regarding depression that may not be dependent on Brazilian regional aspects, or maybe DASS-21 is not influenced by regional variations in its discriminative capacity to assess depression.…”

“…Based on the assumption that symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress might overlap (such as negative affect, emotional distress and physiological reactions), a scale that simultaneously assess depression, anxiety and stress in adults was developed, namely the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale -DASS-21 (Brown, Chorpita, Korotitsch, & Barlow, 1997). This instrument has recently been adapted and validated to the Brazilian context (Vignola & Tucci, 2014) and it was applied in college students to evaluate their mental health state (Borges, Figueiredo, & Souto, 2017). This instrument has the advantage of assessing three constructs simultaneously, in addition to presenting faster and easier application.…”