The mediating effects of fear of COVID-19 and depression on the association between intolerance of uncertainty and emotional eating during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey

Pak, H, Süsen, Y, Denizci Nazlıgül, M and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2022. The mediating effects of fear of COVID-19 and depression on the association between intolerance of uncertainty and emotional eating during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 20 (3), pp. 1882-1896. ISSN 1557-1874

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the mental health of individuals due to severe changes in their normal life routines. These changes might give rise to stress-induced factors and result in developing maladaptive behaviors. Therefore, the present study tested an explorative sequential mediation model regarding the COVID-19 pandemic as a global natural experiment and hypothesized that fear and depression would be serial mediators of the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and emotional eating. An online cross-sectional survey with convenience sampling was adopted. A total of 362 participants were recruited from Turkey, and each completed a battery of demographic questions and psychometric scales. The standardized instruments used to test the model’s constructs were the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-R21. The model was tested using a bootstrapping method utilizing IBM AMOS 24 software. Results showed that emotional eating was positively associated with intolerance of uncertainty, fear of COVID-19, and depression. Moreover, fear of COVID-19 had positive correlation with intolerance of uncertainty and depression. Significant negative association was also found between age and intolerance of uncertainty. In addition, females significantly reported higher levels of emotional eating and fear of COVID-19 than males. The study’s hypothesized sequential mediation model was further supported. It is concluded that depression most likely developed by fear was triggered by intolerance of uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic and leading to emotional eating. The study is significant because it advances theories of emotional eating with an investigation examining some of its underlying mechanisms. Also, it is one of a few research studies highlighting to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic-related cognitions and emotions are associated with maladaptive behaviors in the case of emotional eating.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Creators:	Pak, H., Süsen, Y., Denizci Nazlıgül, M. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	June 2022
Volume:	20
Number:	3
ISSN:	1557-1874
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11469-021-00489-z DOI 1553746 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	20 Jun 2022 10:21
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2022 10:21
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/46467

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