The effect of mindfulness based psychoeducation program on university students' emotional eating, uncontrolled eating and emotions management skills

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of mindfulness based psychoeducation program on emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, control of negative body response and coping with emotions behaviors among university students. For this purpose pre-test post-test control group design was used in the study. The study group includes 12 female and 12 male students of Education and Literature Faculties in Akdeniz University. Participants' ages ranged from 18 to 23 years. During the study, mindfulness based psychoeducation program was applied to participants (3 female, 3 male) in the experimental group and participants in the control group (3 women, 3 men) did not receive any treatment. In this research, the participants filled out Personal Informations Form, The Three Factor Eating Questionnaire, and Emotions Management Skills Scale. According to the findings, the emotional eating scores of the participants in the experimental group decreased significantly while the control group did not show any change. While there was no significant difference between the uncontrolled eating pre-test post-test scores of participants in the experimental group, the difference between the post-tests of the participants in the experimental and control groups was significant. Considering that the difference between emotional eating post-test-pre-test difference scores of the participants in experiment and control groups is also meaningful, it can be said that this change is resulted from psychoeducation program. Participants in the experimental group increased significantly in their ability to control of negative body response, while no change in the control group was observed. At the same time, there is a significant difference between the post-test scores of control of negative body response of the experimental and control groups. In the light of these findings, it was concluded that psychoeducation program have a positive influence on the behavior of the participants to control of negative body response. There was no significant change in the coping with emotions scores of the participants in the experiment group. Similarly, there was no significant difference between the coping with emotions post-test scores of the participants in the experimental and control groups. It can be said that this side of the program should be strengthened by going out from this finding. Keywords: Emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, emotions management skills, control of negative body response, coping with emotions, mindfulness, psychoeducation.