The Association of Adverse Life Events with Children's Emotional Overeating and Restrained Eating in a Population-based Cohort

Overview

Journal Int J Eat Disord

Publisher Wiley

Specialty Social Sciences

Date 2020 Jul 24

PMID 32702148

Citations 9

Authors

Robin Thomas

Roberta Siliquini

Manon H Hillegers

Pauline W Jansen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: Life adversities are recognized risk factors for eating disorders, in adolescents and adults, but whether such adversities are also associated with particular eating behaviors earlier in life is still unclear. Our aim was to assess whether experiencing adverse life events in early childhood is associated with emotional overeating and restrained eating at age 10.

Methods: Emotional overeating and restrained eating were assessed in 4,653 10-years-old children using the mother-reported Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire and Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Mothers also reported on 24 different life events during childhood, those with moderate or severe impact being categorized as adverse life events. Regression analyses were performed to investigate relationships between adverse life events and eating behaviors in the total sample.

Results: Adjusted for covariates, adverse life events were associated with more emotional overeating and restrained eating in children (p-values for trend <.01). Specifically, mothers who reported that their child experienced 3+ adverse life events, also reported significantly higher emotional overeating (B = 0.20; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.06-0.33) and restrained eating (B = 0.21; 95% CI, 0.08-0.33) in their children relative to children who did not experience adverse life events. These results did not differ by sex.

Discussion: Our results based on mother-reported data suggest that children's experiences of life adversities are associated with emotional overeating and restrained eating at age 10 years. We recommend future prospective studies using multi-informant assessments of both adverse life events and eating behaviors to further describe the nature and developmental course of this relationship.

Citing Articles

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Eating behaviors as pathways from early childhood adversity to adolescent cardiometabolic risk.

Doom J, Deer L, Mickel T, Infante A, Rivera K Health Psychol. 2024; 43(6):448-461.

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Vahedi L, Orjuela-Grimm M, Bhatt-Carreno S, Meyer S PLoS One. 2023; 18(2):e0281961.

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Stressful life events, psychosocial health and general health in preschool children before age 4.

Luo J, van Grieken A, Zhou S, Fang Y, Raat H World J Pediatr. 2022; 19(3):243-250.

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Cross-national variation in the association between family structure and overweight and obesity: Findings from the Health Behaviour in School-aged children (HBSC) study.

Fismen A, Smith O, Helleve A, Haug E, Chatelan A, Kelly C SSM Popul Health. 2022; 19:101127.

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