Attachment style and emotional eating in bariatric surgery candidates: The mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation
Section snippets
Participants
Participants included 2120 consecutively referred candidates who were assessed by the Toronto Western Hospital Bariatric Surgery program (TWH-BSP), a Level 1A bariatric surgery Centre of Excellence accredited by the American College of Surgeons and one of two adult bariatric surgery assessment centers within the University of Toronto Bariatric Surgery Collaborative.
Procedure
Patients were referred to the TWH-BSP through a centralized provincial bariatric surgery registry called the Ontario Bariatric
Descriptive data and correlations
Two hundred and eighty-eight males and 1095 females (mean age 44.72 years, mean BMI = 49.05 kg/m2) undergoing assessment for bariatric surgery completed at least one of the current study's psychosocial measures and were included in the current study. Although no significant differences in age or BMI were found between patients included in the current analyses and patients excluded (n = 737) due to lack of completion of any of the study measures, significant differences in gender were found between
Discussion
The current study examined pathways that link insecure attachment to emotional eating in individuals being assessed for bariatric surgery. Cross-sectional path analyses revealed that difficulties in emotion regulation were an important underlying mechanism linking insecure attachment styles to emotional eating, even when statistically accounting for the influence of concurrent anxiety, depression, and global disordered eating in bariatric surgery candidates.
Overall results suggest that
Role of funding sources
There is no funding source for this study.
Contributors
Marlene Taube-Schiff and Jessica Van Exan co-authored the manuscript and in doing so summarized the literature related to this manuscript and contributed substantially to the interpretation this work.
Rika Tanaka performed the data analyses for the study and wrote the results section of the manuscript.
Susan Wnuk has contributed to the conceptualization of measures used in the study and was involved in the analyses of the data.
Raed Hawa has provided contributions to the conceptualization of this
Conflict of interest
There are no conflicts of interest for any of the authors to declare.
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