Parental Rejection as a Predictor of Emotional Eating After Inpatient Weight Loss Treatment for Youngsters

Research suggests that the emotional eating style of youngsters with obesity may be a stable feature, even after they receive treatment. Moreover, emotional eating, defined as eating in response to emotions, may be linked to relapse after their weight loss treatment. Thus, it is important to uncover the determinants of the eating style of these youngsters. This may bring insight on how to reduce emotional eating after treatment and subsequently prevent relapse.Existing research on the determinants of emotional eating before treatment suggests the influence of parental rejection and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. In this study, the researchers then aim to examine the relationships between parental rejection, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and the emotional eating style of youngsters. This will be applied to those who finished an inpatient multidisciplinary weight loss treatment program and are back in their home environment.

Participants were 52 youngsters, aged 11 to 17 years, with an average percent over ideal body mass index or B-M-I for short of 186.11% before treatment. Thereafter, they were at 136.37% at a mean follow-up of 4 months. Participants completed questionnaires assessing maternal and paternal rejection, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and emotional eating. Data were analyzed using a bootstrapping procedure.

The researchers found that in partial mediation, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies are the mediator between maternal rejection and emotional eating. In contrast, the relation between paternal rejection and emotional eating was not mediated by the maladaptive strategies. There was no direct correlation of paternal rejection with maladaptive emotion regulation. The results suggest that maternal rejection may have a broader influence on the emotion regulation of the youngster than paternal rejection. Previous research suggested that children may be more exposed to maternal, versus paternal influences, which may explain the greater impact of the former. The researchers also found that the percent over ideal BMI significantly decreased between pretest and posttest. However, on average, it increased 11.3% after treatment. Also, this increase in percent over ideal BMI was not related to the level of emotional eating at follow-up, contrary to the hypothesis.

The results suggest that the family climate indeed affects the eating style of the youngsters after weight loss treatment. Moving forward, this study aims to contribute to relapse prevention and treatment of emotional eating in youngsters. This study further suggests assessing and then, if necessary, improving the emotional bond between the parent and child in treatment. Although family-based interventions for childhood and adolescent obesity are numerous, only a small part of these interventions focus on the emotional bond between parent and child. Most family-based treatments show a narrow family focus; parents are instructed on how they can increase children's healthy eating and exercise. However, some researchers have noted that greater parental involvement is more costly and has no evidence of greater effectiveness. Thus, the researchers recommend an individualized treatment approach. Children with overweight, deviant eating behavior and an adverse parent-child relationship may benefit from intensive family-based therapeutic interventions. This is compared to other therapeutic interventions focused only on modifying weight-related behavior.