Background Emotional eating (EE), defined as eating in response to a range of emotions, has been previously associated with poor diet and obesity. Since there are limited data from non-Western populations, this study aims to examine the prevalence and factors associated with EE among urban Chinese university students. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 424 university students (aged 18–24 years) from two large universities in Hong Kong in 2019. Respondents completed an anonymous online questionnaire that contained background questions, an emotional eating subscale of the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ), and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS-21). Two-sample independent t-test and multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the association of study variables with negative emotional eating. Results There was over a three-fold higher likelihood of negative EE among females (14.8%) when compared with their male counterparts (4.5%) (OR = 3.7, p < 0.05). Having at least mild depressive symptoms was the only independent factor associated with negative EE among males (OR = 10.1) while for females, negative EE was independently associated with not having a romantic partner (OR = 3.45), having depressive symptoms (OR = 44.5), and having at least mild stress (OR = 5.65). Anxiety levels were not independently associated with negative EE for either gender. Both male and female students with negative EE had significantly lower self-perceived health scores, higher body mass index, and lower life satisfaction scores. Conclusions This study revealed that negative EE is prevalent among female Chinese university students and not uncommon among male students. Management of negative EE should be included as a component of university mental health promotion programmes in the region.
Background For patients with rare diseases (RD), misdiagnosis (or erroneous diagnosis) is one of the key issues that hinder RD patients’ accessibility to timely treatment. Yet, little is known about the main factors that are associated with RD patients’ misdiagnosis. The objective of this study is to analyze data from a national survey among 2040 RD patients from China to explore the association between misdiagnosis and various factors, including patients’ demographics, socio-economic status, medical history, and their accessibility to RD information. Results Three binary logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the relationships between misdiagnosis and level of rarity of the RDs (mild, moderate, and severe), demographics, health insurance levels, and accessibility to disease-related information by using the total sample, and the adult and non-adult sub-samples. We found that accessibility to RD information is the most critical factor influencing the patients’ chances of being misdiagnosed (odds ratio [OR] = 4.459, p < 0.001). In other words, the greater the difficulty in accessing the information on RD management, the higher the possibility of experiencing misdiagnosis. Such influences of information accessibility on misdiagnosis were repeatedly discovered when examining the adult (OR = 3.732, p < 0.001) and the non-adult (OR = 5.174, p < 0.001) sub-samples. The association between perceived economic status and misdiagnosis was only significant in the total sample. The only other factor significantly associated with misdiagnosis was disease multimorbidity: participants who reported no multimorbidity are less likely to experience misdiagnosis (OR = 0.42, p < 0.001). Conclusions Our study indicated that patients with RDs who have difficulty in accessing disease-related information are two to five times more likely to have experienced misdiagnosis. Even after adjusting for the patients’ age, gender, economic levels, and education levels, the impact of information accessibility was still significant. Our finding highlights the importance of access to information in reducing misdiagnosis among RD patients.
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