The effect of depression, anxiety and stress states on nutritional behavior of individuals in the COVID-19 process

SARS-CoV-2 was emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan and it spread out around the World in a short span of time. Goverments took preventive measures like quarantine, social isolation and wearing mask. These measures restrict liberty. Measures of this pandemi causes psychologic disorders like deppresion, anxiety and stress. People refer to overeating for handling this situation or they loose their appetites. This study was carried out to observe the effects of psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress, which were pre-existing in individuals with increased effects or developed as a result of the pandemic, on nutritional behaviors. In this study depression, anxiety and stress levels are measured by DAS-21. Food consumption questionnaire was used for determining increased foods consumption acording pandemi. Including 169 male and 291 female, 460 person joined to our study. Consequently, it is found that unchanging weight body count at normal levels of depression, anxiety and stress group is significant. (p<0.01) At the same time, the depression and stress score average was found to be significantly higher in individuals who stated that they gained weight, and the anxiety score was significantly higher in individuals who stated that they lost weight. (p<0.01) It was observed that BMI decreased when anxiety increased. In addition, the number and rate of individuals whose consumption of sweets, alcoholic beverages, sugary and fizzy drinks, bagels, pastries, cookies and cakes in normal depression and normal stress severity did not change were significantly higher than the other severity groups. The number of individuals whose consumption of fast foods and sugary and carbonated beverages did not change in normal anxiety severity and the rate value were significantly higher than the other severity groups (p<0.05).