The association between depression, anxiety, stress and dietary behavior in female students

Background: According to the previous studies, stress influences on eating behavior and is associated with unhealthy food selection. Furthermore, the research literature indicates that stress, anxiety, and depression can cause polyphagia and overweight. The purpose of present study is to investigate the relationship between depression, anxiety, and stress scales and dietary behavior in female high school students. Methods: The cross-section study was carried out from April to December 2016 on high school female students of Tehran City by confirmation and protection of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology Faculty at Shahid Beheshti Medical Sciences University, Tehran, Iran. 400 samples were selected by using multistage cluster sampling method. After receiving consent and recording socio-economic information, the data associated with stress, anxiety, and depression score were collected by a short questionnaire of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales 21 (DASS-21). In order to survey the dietary behavior of students, the 168-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was applied. In addition, to assess the association between dietary behavior and stress, anxiety and depression, chi-squared test and logistic regression model were employed. Results: Based on the results of the present paper, 49.8 percent of students, studied in this research, had stress levels, 56.3 percent of them suffered from anxiety and 55.3 percent of them had depression levels. The salt intake amounts of students who had high stress, depression, and anxiety, were more than of normal ones (respectively P=0.01, 0.02, 0.006). Additionally, fast food consumptions of students, suffering from anxiety, were also higher than normal (P=0.07). Subjects, which were categorized in depressed group, rarely eat natural fruit juice (P=0.03), and, stressful students use few natural fruit juices (P=0.006) and few fresh fruits too (P=0.02). Conclusion: Students with levels of stress, depression and anxiety in comparison to normal students, have more undesirable food habits, such problems may lead dietary behavior to unhealthy foods. More studies are required to clarify the relationships between dietary behavior and stress, depression and anxiety.