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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO325

Mealtime anxiety in bulimia nervosa: the mediating role of anxiety about food and weight gain

MEALTIME ANXIETY IN BULIMIA NERVOSA : THE MEDIATING ROLE OF CONCERN ABOUT FOOD AND WEIGHT GAIN

Anxiety about food and weight gain partially mediates the relationship between an ICD-11 diagnosis of bulimia nervosa and mealtime anxiety.

The study examined the potential mediating role of anxiety about food and weight gain in the relationship between an ICD-11 diagnosis of bulimia nervosa (BN) and mealtime anxiety in the Polish general population. A total of 814 individuals aged 14 years and older completed the Health Concern Scale (Kähkönen and Tuorila, 1999), which measures anxiety about sugar, fat, and calorie consumption and weight gain, and the Fear of Food Measure (Levinson and Byrne, 2015), which measures eating anxiety, food avoidance behaviors, and feared thoughts related to eating; the sample had a mean age of 24.43 years (SD = 10.71) and a mean body mass index of 23.50 (SD = 4.69), and included 180 male and 634 female participants. An ICD-11 BN diagnosis was a significant predictor of anxiety about food and weight gain (B = 2.69, SE = 0.38, 95% confidence interval [1.94, 3.43], β = 0.26, p < 0.001); anxiety about food and weight gain was also a significant predictor of mealtime anxiety (B = 1.15, SE = 0.08, 95% CI [0.98, 1.32], β = 0.41, p < 0.001). After controlling for the mediator, an ICD-11 BN diagnosis continued to predict mealtime anxiety (B = 6.75, SE = 0.97, 95% CI [4.84, 8.66], β = 0.23, p < 0.001), consistent with partial mediation. The predictors explained 26% of the variance in mealtime anxiety, and the indirect effect coefficient was reported as significant (B = 0.31, SE = 0.47, 95% CI [2.24, 4.07]); the path diagram in the poster showed coefficients of a = 0.26, b = 0.41, c = 0.23, and c' = 0.34 (all p < 0.001). In conclusion, anxiety about food and weight gain partially mediates the effect of a BN diagnosis on mealtime anxiety and may function as a cognitive vulnerability factor in the development of fear of food. This finding highlights the importance of directly addressing anxiety about food and weight gain in therapeutic interventions.

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