Lack of causal relationship between depressive symptoms and eating abnormalities in a nonclinical population: Findings from a six-month follow-up study

Abstract

Three alternative causal hypotheses have been proposed concerning the relationship between mood and eating disturbances: (1) mood disturbances in eating disorders are consequences of eating abnormalities; (2) eating abnormalities are consequences of underlying mood disturbances; (3) mood and eating disturbances are not causally related but are both effects of some other set of common causes or “third variables.” The present study used a cross-lagged panel design to examine these competing causal hypotheses concerning mood and eating symptoms in a nonclinical population. High-school girls, 543, ranging in age from 13 to 17, were tested twice (across a 6-month interval) for depressive symptoms and eating abnormalities. Autocorrelations indicated that mood and eating disturbances were quite stable over the 6-month period (.71 for mood and .72 for eating). Synchronous correlations revealed a moderate but stable association between mood and eating disturbances (.41 for Time 1 and .42 for Time 2). Comparison of cross-lagged correlations from mood to eating pathology (.34) and from eating to mood disturbances (.35), however, indicated no predominant causal sequence between these two variables. Implications of these findings were discussed.