Binge eating and binge drinking among adolescents: The role of drinking and eating motives

What is it about?

The present study aimed to investigate the motivations underlying binge eating and binge drinking in a sample of 302 adolescents. Our findings showed that binge eating was significantly correlated with gender, Environmental, Emotional and Social Eating.

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Why is it important?

This study showed that binge drinking and binge eating may share common functions; thus, integrated health programmes focusing simultaneously on these two behaviours may be most advisable. In particular, given that this study confirms that the engagement in both binge eating and binge drinking is mainly motivated by the need to regulate emotions, future prevention programs should be designed to train adolescents to use more adaptive and effective strategies to manage emotions, rather than using alcohol or food as a way to reach coping goals only temporarily.