Chronotype and eating behavior patterns in mothers of children with disabilities: a case-control study on sleep and...

The increasing burden of caring for children with disabilities brings about various psychological and physiological difficulties for mothers. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between chronotype characteristics and eating disorders and intuitive eating behavior tendencies of mothers with disabled children.

The study was a case-control study conducted in a private rehabilitation center in Turkey and included 50 mothers of disabled children with cerebral palsy and 56 mothers of healthy children. Socio-demographic information, Morningness-Eveningness Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire-13 (EDE-Q-13), Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2) and anthropometric measurements were taken from the participants.

Mothers of children with disabilities had significantly lower chronotype scores (47.20 ± 4.65) compared with mothers of healthy children (53.66 ± 5.31) (p < 0.001), with a lower proportion of morningness (p = 0.004). The EDE-Q-13 scores were higher for mothers of children with disabilities (1.72 ± 1.08) compared with those with healthy children (1.32 ± 0.97) (p = 0.046). In addition, mothers with disabled children showed higher rates in the subscales of binge eating and purging behaviors (p = 0.001 and p < 0.001, respectively) and sleep medication use (p = 0.002).

Mothers with disabled children were found to have higher predisposition to evening chronotype, eating disorder scores and use of medical sleep medication than mothers with healthy children. Because this situation increases the risk of diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, it reveals the necessity of special nutrition and health follow-up programmes.