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Published on: May 8, 2018
The relationship between Night Eating Syndrome, depression and chronotype in a non-clinical adolescent population
Giulia Riccobono1, Assunta Pompili1, Angela Iannitelli1
1Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, Italy.
Purpose:
The aim of the current study was to assess the prevalence of Night Eating Syndrome (NES) in a population of non-clinical adolescents and to investigate the relationship between NES, depression and eveningness dimension.
Methods:
The data were collected from a sample of 301 subjects, 181 females and 120 males, aged between 15 and 19 (mean value 17.64, SD=1.3). All subjects were invited to answer demographic questions and to take a self-report battery composed by three questionnaires: the Night Eating Questionnaire (NEQ), the Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).
Results:
The distribution of chronotypes in the sample was: morning type 9%, intermediate 68.4% and evening type 22.6%. 4% of the participants (12 subjects) reached the criteria for NES. The data indicate that MEQ and NEQ scores are significantly inversely correlated (r=-0.157; p<0.01); 58.3% of the participants who reached the criteria for NES received low scores on the MEQ. The BDI scores resulted significantly associated with the NEQ variable (r=0.275; p=0.001).
Conclusions:
This is the first study, as far as we are aware, which has investigated the relationship between chronotype, depression and NES in an adolescent non-clinical population. The findings of our study highlight the high prevalence of NES in the adolescent population and indicate a significant association between eveningness dimension, Depression and NES.
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