The relationship between anxiety, coping, and disordered-eating attitudes in adolescent military-dependents at high-risk for excess weight gain

Adolescent military-dependents are an understudied population who face unique stressors due to their parents' careers. Research suggests tat adolescent military-dependents report more anxiety and disordered-eating than their civilian counterparts. While anxiety symptoms predict the onset and worsening of disordered-eating attitudes, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. One factor that may underlie this relationship, and be particularly relevant for military-dependent youth, is coping. Therefore, we examined adolescent military-dependents (N = 136; 14.5 ± 1.5 years; 59.6% female; BMI-z: 1.9 ± 0.4) who were at-risk for adult obesity and binge-eating disorder due to an age- and sex-adjusted BMI ≥ 85 th percentile and loss-of-control eating and/or elevated anxiety. Participants completed an interview assessing disordered-eating attitudes and questionnaires on anxiety symptoms and coping strategies at a single time point. Bootstrapping models were conducted to examine the indirect paths between anxiety symptoms and disordered-eating attitudes through five coping subscales (aggression, distraction, endurance, self-distraction, and stress-recognition). Adjusting for relevant covariates, no significant indirect paths through the coping subscales (ps > .05) were found in any models. General coping, nonspecific to eating, may not be a pathway between anxiety symptoms and disordered-eating attitudes among adolescents. Future research should examine other potential mediators of this relationship.Abbreviations: BMI-z, BMI standard deviation score, adjusted for age and sex; LECI-C, Life Events and Coping Inventory - Coping