Emotion regulation and drunkorexia behaviors among Lebanese adults: the indirect effects of positive and negative metacognition

Abstract

Background Although metacognition processes are a core feature of restrictive eating and alcohol cravings and entail an individual to control both of his/her emotions and thoughts, yet, to our knowledge, a scarcity of research has examined their potential role in drunkorexia as cognitive and emotional predictors. The following study investigates the different associations between two emotion regulation strategies (i.e. emotional suppression and cognitive reappraisal) and drunkorexia behaviors in a sample of Lebanese adults, exploring the possible indirect effects of positive and negative alcohol-related metacognitions. Methods This was a cross-sectional study that enrolled 335 participants (March-July 2021). Results Higher problematic alcohol use (beta = 5.56), higher physical activity index (beta = 0.08), higher expressive suppression (beta = 0.23), higher negative metacognitive beliefs about cognitive harm due to drinking (beta = 0.75) and higher cognitive reappraisal (beta = 0.20) were significantly associated with more drunkorexic behaviors. The positive metacognitive beliefs about cognitive self-regulation significantly mediated the association between cognitive reappraisal and drunkorexia behaviors. Both the positive metacognitive beliefs about cognitive self-regulation and the negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability of drinking significantly mediated the association between expressive suppression and drunkorexia behaviors. Conclusion This study demonstrated that emotional and metacognitive processes are associated with drunkorexia, addressing as well the mediating effect between deficient emotional regulation and risky behavioral patterns. Overall, our results would speculate that the lack of emotional and cognitive assets might enhance internal distress perceived out of control, leading individuals to indulge in maladaptive behavioral patterns for managing the underlying impairment.

The Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Alcohol Abuse and Drunkorexia Behaviors in Young Adults

“…In line with previous studies [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 ], the present study found that alcohol abuse positively predicted drunkorexia, whereby participants with greater alcohol-related problems exhibited more frequent dysfunctional compensatory behaviors with respect to COVID-19–related variables, the long-term emotional impact of the pandemic also affected drunkorexia behaviors, albeit in a very different way, confirming the uniqueness of this behavior. Specifically, only the frequency of negative intrusive thoughts about the pandemic positively predicted drunkorexia behaviors, while avoidance of these thoughts and the number of COVID-19 negative experiences were not significant.…”

“…Despite recent evidence of the pandemic’s role in contributing to an upsurge in eating disorders, drinking problems, and other negative psychological conditions [ 7 , 12 , 16 , 30 , 40 ], little is known about the impact of pandemic-related stress on drunkorexia behaviors [ 11 ]. However, recent studies have documented an association between drunkorexia, psychological distress, and emotion regulation difficulties [ 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. For instance, Qi and colleagues [ 59 ] observed higher mean scores of affective problems (e.g., anxiety, depression) in young adults engaging in drunkorexia behaviors.…”

A systematic review of the relationship between generic and specific metacognitive beliefs and emotion dysregulation: A metacognitive model of emotion dysregulation

“…All selected studies had a cross-sectional design. Six studies were conducted in Italy (Casale et al, 2016;Laghi et al, 2018;Mansueto et al, 2022;Palmieri et al, 2023b;Rogier et al, 2022;Spada & Marino, 2017), six studies in Iran (Akbari, 2017;Akbari et al, 2021Akbari et al, , 2023Mazloom et al, 2016;Mohammadkhani et al, 2020;Poormahdy et al, 2022), one study in United Kingdom (Manser et al, 2012), one study in Poland (Dragan, 2015), one in the United States of America (Leahy et al, 2019), one study in Spain (Salguero et al, 2019), one study in Lebanon (Azzi et al, 2022) and one study in Canada (Deleurme et al, 2022).…”

“…Nine studies were run on non-clinical samples (i.e., university students and general population) (Akbari, 2017, Akbari et al, 2021Akbari et al, 2023;Casale et al, 2016;Deleurme et al, 2022;Manser et al, 2012;Mansueto et al, 2022, study 1;Rogier et al, 2022;Salguero et al, 2019), seven studies on clinical samples (i.e., patients under psychotherapy, outpatients seeking psychological treatment, outpatients with eating disorders, participants with nicotine dependence, alcohol dependence inpatients and drinkers) (Azzi et al, 2022;Dragan, 2015;Leahy et al, 2019;Mansueto et al, 2022, study 2;Ottonello et al, 2019;Palmieri et al, 2023b;Poormahdy et al, 2022), and four studies were run on adolescent samples (Laghi et al, 2018;Mazloom et al, 2016;Mohammadkhani et al, 2020;Spada & Marino, 2017).…”

“…III. An increase of emotion dysregulation may be associated with an activation of dysfunctional metacognitive beliefs (Akbari, 2017;Azzi et al, 2022;Casale et al, 2016;Poormahdy et al, 2022;Rogier et al, 2022;Salguero et al, 2019).…”