The Relationship Among Family Cohesion And Adaptability, Depression And Eating Attitudes Of College Students

Family cohesion is defined as the emotional bonding that family members have toward one another, family adaptability is defined as the family members’ problem-solving ability in each stage of development. Depression ofen appears when individuals thrown into jail, it is a negative emotion. Depression can restore automatically, also can be more serious. Eating attitudes are a series of views, emotions and behaviors about diet. Normal eating attitudes ensure our survival instinct and social function in an orderly manner, but the eating attitudes deviation from the norm could make the prevalence of eating disorders increased. Poor family fuctioning increases individual’s negative emotions, it may have a direct impact on the individual’s problem behaviors, but also may play a role by internal factors. We investigated the relationship between family adaptability and cohesion, depression and eating attitudes of college students, including trait and overall levels of each variables. The results show as follows:Ⅰ. The Chinese version of EAT-19 including four factors: dieting, compensatory behavior, awareness of food contents, bulimia and food preoccupation. EAT-19 has good internal consistency reliability, construct validity and criterion validity, meet psychometrics requirements, it could be applicable to assess the eating attitudes and behaviors of college students.Ⅱ. The college students’ family adaptability and cohesion are in a medium level. The score of family cohesion is more higher than family adaptability. Family adaptability and cohesion exist significant differences between demographic variables.Ⅲ. The score of college students’ depression is in the normal level. Non-child’s depression is significantly higer than one-child’s, the students from rural areas have significant higher scores than the students from urban areas.Ⅳ. Individual dieting are the characteristic of eating attitudes of college students, and the dieting belief or behaviors are in a low-middle level. There are significant gender and urban-rural differences on eating attitudes. Dieting exists significant differences between demographic variables. Bulimia and food preoccupation exists significant differences between demographic variables.Ⅴ. Family adaptability and cohesion, depression and eating attitudes are related with each other.Ⅵ. The relationship between family adaptability and cohesion and eating attitudes is suppressed by depression. Family cohesion could account for eating attitudes.