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Prospective Relations between Overeating, Loss of Control Eating, Binge Eating, and Depressive Symptoms in a School-Based Sample of Adolescents

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Abstract

A sample of 353 community adolescents (grades 9 to 12, 57.6 % female) participated in a 2-wave longitudinal study of eating behaviors (overeating, loss of control eating [LOC], and binge eating) and depression. The study addresses 4 hypotheses. (1) The prospective relations between eating behaviors and depressive symptoms will be reciprocal, with each predicting the other over time. (2) These relations will be stronger for girls than for boys. (3) These relations will be stronger for adolescents with high (not low) body mass index (BMI). (4) LOC will show incremental predictive utility in relation to depressive symptoms over and above overeating. Evidence supported reciprocal relations between binge eating and depressive symptoms and between overeating and depressive symptoms, but not between LOC and depressive symptoms. Sex and BMI did not substantially moderate these relations. Taken separately, overeating but not LOC predicted depressive symptoms. Taken together, neither predictor was significant controlling for the other. Results raise questions about the importance of LOC alone in predicting depressive symptoms in adolescence.

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Notes

  1. A list of appropriate and freely available measures was created after researching eating disorder assessment in the Handbook of Eating Disorders Assessment and Treatment (Walsh et al. 2015). Additional information about the measure is available from the first author upon request.

  2. Additional information about the factor analysis is available from the first author upon request.

  3. With the current sample size and one-tailed alpha set at .05, we had 0.80 power to detect even a small three-way interaction (Cohen’s f 2 = .02) and 0.81 power to detect a small two-way interaction (Cohen 1988). We also tested interaction effects involving age; age was not a statistically significant moderator in any analysis. Full regression models are available from the first author upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children’s Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Keneisha Sinclair-McBride

  2. Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, 0552 GPC, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN, 37203-5721, USA

    Keneisha Sinclair-McBride & David A. Cole

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  1. Keneisha Sinclair-McBride
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  2. David A. Cole
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Correspondence to Keneisha Sinclair-McBride.

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This study was funded by a Vanderbilt University Peabody College Professional Development Fund for Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, Ph.D.

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Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, Ph.D., declares that she has no conflict of interest. David A. Cole, Ph.D., declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Sinclair-McBride, K., Cole, D.A. Prospective Relations between Overeating, Loss of Control Eating, Binge Eating, and Depressive Symptoms in a School-Based Sample of Adolescents. J Abnorm Child Psychol 45, 693–703 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0186-0

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