Internalized weight stigma and psychological distress mediate the association of perceived weight stigma with food addiction among young adults: a cross-sectional study

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Huang, P-C, Latner, JD, Bevan, N, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, Chen, J-S, Huang, CH, O’Brien, KS and Lin, C-Y, 2024. Internalized weight stigma and psychological distress mediate the association of perceived weight stigma with food addiction among young adults: a cross-sectional study. Journal of Eating Disorders, 12: 150. ISSN 2050-2974

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-024-01112-x

Abstract

Background
Perceived weight stigma (PWS) and internalized weight stigma (IWS) are both associated with psychological distress and food addiction (FA). Using the previously proposed ‘cyclic obesity/weight-based stigma’ (COBWEBS) model, the present study extended the framework to investigate the mediating effects of IWS and psychological distress in the association between PWS and FA among young adults. Given that individuals who are overweight/have obesity have different vulnerabilities, this population was separately analyzed alongside the total study population.

Methods
An online survey comprising the Perceived Weight Stigma Scale, Weight Bias Internalization Scale (WBIS), Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21), and modified Yale Food Addiction Scale Version 2 was completed by 601 participants (59.6% females; mean age 29.3 years [SD = 6.07]). A total of 219 participants were categorized as being overweight/having obesity.

Results
A direct correlation was found between PWS and FA (standardized coefficient [β] = 0.28, p < 0.001) among both populations, and was mediated by IWS and psychological distress (β [95% CI] = 0.03 [0.01, 0.05] for WBIS score and 0.10 [0.06, 0.14] for DASS-21 score) among the total participants, but only mediated by psychological distress among participants who were overweight/had obesity (β [95% CI] = 0.14 [0.06, 0.24]).

Conclusions
The results demonstrated novel perspectives by showing the direct association between PWS and FA and the mediating roles of IWS and psychological distress. Treatment strategies such as psychological acceptance and psychoeducation could be used to reduce weight stigma, which could have positive downstream benefits of ameliorating FA. Future research may seek to study strategies for reducing weight stigma and psychological distress, to investigate their efficacy in improving disordered eating.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Eating Disorders
Creators:	Huang, P.-C., Latner, J.D., Bevan, N., Griffiths, M.D., Chen, J.-S., Huang, C.H., O’Brien, K.S. and Lin, C.-Y.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	2024
Volume:	12
ISSN:	2050-2974
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s40337-024-01112-x DOI 2234445 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	01 Oct 2024 13:19
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2024 13:19
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52334