The Study of Relationship Between Eating Traits and Depressive Tendency in College Athletes

Park, Se Hyun; Lee, Young Ho; Chung, Young Cho; Lim, Kyung Ho

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
The authors attempted to investigate the relationship between depression and eating disorder or eating related problems through revealing the prevalence rate of eating problem and it's relationship to depressive tendency in athletic in athletic group which was considered as a high risk group fort eating disorders.
METHODS
The subjects were 308 college athletes(Male: 187, Female: 121) and 477 college student controls(Male: 248, Female: 229). The authors used self-report questionnaire which was composed of epidemiologic data, eating habit scale, Eating Attitude Test(EAT), scale for locus of control for wieght, scale for food preference and eating behavior. And we also used Beck Depression Inventory of korean standadized edition for assessment of depression.
RESULTS
1) The eating habit of college athletes was better than that of college students, but the total score of the EAT related to abnormal eating behaviors and eating disorder in college athletes was higher than that in college students. In locus of control for weight, male athletes showed a similar trend with female athletes and college students, but they were different from male college students. And female athletes had a distinctive food preference or palatibility as like preference for cold and sour tasted food and vegetables. 2) The total scores of BDI in college athletes was higher than that in college students with the score highest in male athletes, among all the groups. The hypochondriacal tendency in male athletes was higher than that in male college students. 3) There were no significant correlation between eating habit and depression and between locus of weight control and depression in college athletes. But there was significant correlation between the score of EAT and BDI in male athletes. 4) In comparison with depressive group and non-depreressive group, there was no significant difference in eating habit, locus of weight control and hypochondriacal tendency but there was meaningful difference in the total score of the EAT.
CONCLUSION
These results may suggest that athletes, especially female athletes, have higher prevalence rate of eating disorder or eating-related problems than college students. Eating problems were significantly related with depression in male athletes but not in female athletes. The difference may suggest that different strategy depending on the sex difference should be needed to manage the athletes with eating problems.